


Turning Tides

by Seaward



Series: Uncertain Ground [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Circus, Cultural Differences, Ecology, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 115,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaward/pseuds/Seaward
Summary: The wetlands around San Francisco Bay offer a unique attraction and a mystery beyond magic. Lily struggles to match the experts with facts while hiding powers she barely understands and cannot always control. Allies old and new want to help, but Lily fears her own desires may endanger those around her.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this story in 2010 under the pseudonym Clara Ward. Many people would categorize it as young adult fantasy, but it is meant to offer something to readers of all ages. The teenage characters' reactions are meant to be honest, and not always ideal or PC. although I believe their understandings develop in positive ways. It has been split into two parts to suit the formatting on AO3. Special thanks to Betsy and Cera for their help with earlier drafts. All remaining mistakes are mine.

 

1

Bikes

All the teenagers’ bikes looked the same, with straight handlebars and modern gear shifts. All looked sturdy and shiny. And each had some sort of rack or basket system on the back.

Lily’s bike looked frail, with thinner tubes and dirt by all the joins. Her handle bars curved under and her gear shifts were controlled by toggles behind the front wheel. There was no magic or circus glamor about it. Her helmet was white and round with small vents, while the other kids all had black, deep blue, or red with huge vents and aerodynamic elongations. Her helmet and bike showed the miles they’d been dragged state to state for the last few years. Lily didn’t know why her family stored and transported a bike rather than buying a used one wherever they went. Probably her parents didn’t want to hassle with shopping after every move.

It wouldn’t have mattered except the girls in the group, all except one with her hair braided back, kept sneaking glances at Lily and her bike. She wished they’d stop; then she made herself stop wishing. Until she knew if her wishes might affect someone here, she wanted to be careful.

The teacher rode in on a bike much like the others. Julia Knebel was the only person Lily knew here, having met her the day before when signing up for the Summer Youth Conservation Corps. At the time, it had seemed like a good way to meet people and maybe learn something useful to do with her magic.

A petite woman with short salt and pepper hair and a vest involving too many pockets, Julia didn’t dismount from her bike. Her quick scan of those waiting took in Lily, the other five girls, and two boys standing over by the “Rinconada Park” sign. With a quick smile she said, “Everyone’s here, let’s get going!”

Lily pulled in line at the back of the group, so no one would have to see her bike or the daypack she’d put her lunch in, not having a fancy rear rack or baskets like the rest. She remembered the day in New Mexico when she’d used a bike trick to knock a bully into a dry creek bed. She couldn’t have done that trick if there’d been baskets beside the rear wheel.

Afterward, she’d biked to Xavier’s house and safety. The small town’s hostility had targeted both her and Xavier, but she’d escaped to Hawaii for the rest of the school year. She wondered how Xavier had held out and where he was now. They’d communicated a bit while Lily was in Hawaii, but she hadn’t received any reply to her last two emails, the ones that mentioned she was moving to California. Thinking about it left a pit in Lily’s stomach, because Xavier had been one of the few people she could talk to about magic.

Lily found herself collecting garbage with Audrey, the girl with the braids, and Julia along an overgrown creek. As she moved closer she heard Audrey say something about, “…the new wind turbine on the roof at the Academy.”

“Well, they designed the hills to channel wind for air circulation inside,” Julia replied. “Still, the designers could have done better if they’d known.”

“Their roof garden worked out well. You can’t even see where the trays knit together.”

Julia nodded and made room as Lily caught up. “I wish we could grow them like that here, but all that fog and rain really changes conditions in the city.” She glanced across to where Lily was walking on the far side of Audrey. “Did they have green roofs or green design where you moved from, Lily?”

“Maybe in Honolulu somewhere, but not in Kaneohe.” Lily racked her brain for anything intelligent to add to the conversation, but she wasn’t entirely certain if a green roof had grass on it or solar panels.

“Were you in Hawaii long?” Audrey looked Lily up and down as if reappraising.

“Less than a year. My dad’s job keeps us moving around.”

“What’s he do? Military?” Audrey asked as she added an empty bottle to her recycling bag.

“No. He’s a program advisor for the Department of Children’s Services. He tends to get called in for a year or two when something catches the Fed’s attention and they want a program restructured or something.”

“Is he working here or in East Palo Alto?”

Audrey said “East Palo Alto” the way Lily’s dad said “external audit,” as if the same letters literally spelled “trouble,” and Lily wondered what she was missing. Lily answered, “I don’t know. Did something happen in East Palo Alto?”

“If you live here in Palo Alto, you’re always being asked to fix something in East Palo Alto, and if your bike gets stolen, that’s where it turns up.”

Julia shook her head at Audrey’s pronouncement and glanced around as if to make sure no one might take offense. “East Palo Alto used to be a lot worse. They finally chased out Romic after hazardous waste leaked into marshlands owned by Palo Alto, and they got a few large retailers like Home Depot and IKEA to move in. But their schools are still mostly in the bottom 5% while Palo Alto’s schools are in the top 5%. Part of that is the voluntary transfer program. That moves about a quarter of the most determined East Palo Alto students to surrounding school districts, including ours.”

Lily wondered who was always being asked to fix things, the city of Palo Alto or Audrey and other individuals, but she wasn’t sure how to ask. In the end, she said, “So they’re a different school district?”

“They’re a whole different city and county,” Julia answered, “But the creek we’re clearing flows from us to them. That means in a broader sense, we’re all connected.”

Sure enough, they spent that day clearing a section of San Francisquito Creek downstream from the park where they’d started. Mostly they cleaned up litter, but there were a few places where they removed fallen branches or shrubbery. Afternoon snack found them mostly collapsed by an arch shaped tunnel under a small bridge.

While the teens passed around trail mix, Julia asked, “Do any of you know the history of this bridge?”

One of the chatty girls answered, “It’s Chaucer Street Bridge, where the creek flooded, right?”

“Well, the creek flooded at several points in 1998 and 1955, but this bridge does seem to be a bottleneck. Even if we clear the creek bed, even if this tunnel doesn’t fill with branches and garbage, by older projections, this spot will flood about every fifty years. Now what happens if sea level rises eight to twelve inches in the next hundred years?”

The group fell silent. Lily could hear a bird chirping above the sound of the creek and the nearby traffic. The bird made sort of a cough sound, like something between a crow and a goose, as Lily tried to figure out enough local geography to understand Julia’s question. She knew the Pacific Ocean was on the west side of the San Francisco Peninsula, but she thought the creek they were following was headed toward San Francisco Bay, not the ocean.

Audrey broke the silence by saying, “I don’t know much about this creek, but I’d guess it gathers run off from the Santa Cruz Mountains. A bunch of streams probably flow into its watershed and then the water slows as the creek levels out and approaches the bay. The bay is connected to the ocean. If sea level rises one foot then so should the level of the bay. That would back up into the creek and maybe the whole thing would slow down or get wider?”

A boy named Pete turned his sketch book around and drew a curve like a ski ramp with one confident swoop. “What if this was the creek?” he said, “The way it used to be, before there were any bridges or tunnels or whatever.”

He drew shallow stairs up the ski ramp slope. “Every time a bridge or something slows the water it backs up a bit, making the water a little higher from there to the next bridge.”

Next, he drew an arrow pointing upward at the base of his ramp. “If sea level goes up, then the water level here goes up, especially at high tide.” He jabbed the pencil at the bottom step on his slope and drew a higher line above it. “When the stream gets very full, that pushes up the level here, here, and here.” He drew another set of even higher steps going all the way up the ramp. “Unless of course it floods someplace like here.” He added wavy lines coming over the top about a third of the way up. “That could be Chaucer Street Bridge. It would flood even more often.”

Julia nodded. “Right. What’s now a fifty year flood zone could become a ten year flood zone if the sea level rises eight to twelve inches. What do you think we should do?”

“Raise all the bridges?” Someone offered.

Julia nodded but shrugged and looked around the group expectantly.

“They could dig the creek deeper, but that would probably be bad for erosion and fish and ecosystem stuff.”

“Make extra side tunnels under the bridges.”

“Divert the water someplace else before it comes downstream?”

“Widen the creek.”

“Widen the part where it meets the bay.”

The answers kept coming, and Lily didn’t know what to say. She usually thought of herself as bright and a good student, but she’d never seen people her age attack a problem this way. She had no ideas to contribute and felt stupid and outclassed.

 

The next morning, the Conservation Corps teens biked single file along a four-lane street. With the fresh air and sunshine, Lily felt like a true California girl. Even if she’d never set foot in Palo Alto before this week, she’d lived in San Diego and Sacramento. In a way this was a return. A friend from Hawaii, Paula, had called and complained about it raining all week there, but Lily hasn’t seen rain since she’d returned to the mainland. She flew down the street on her squat old bike, and for a moment it didn’t matter if she didn’t fit in here. She was determined to make things work.

They all turned left onto a smaller road that dead-ended into a parking lot by a baseball diamond. Their bikes merged onto a paved path where they had to ride single file between a creek and a golf course. After crossing a small bridge over the creek, Julia instructed them to lock their bikes by a pump station surrounded by a chain link fence. The fence slanted out on top and had big loops of barbed wire. Lily wondered why the little brick and concrete pumping station needed such security, but it seemed as good a place as any to lock up bikes.

The group continued on foot along a raised, paved path. To the left Lily could see houses and back yards. Farther along she spotted an elementary school with bright murals and playground equipment. It didn’t look like a school that would be in the bottom five percent but the signs said “City of East Palo Alto.” On the right was an expanse of dirt, grasses and mud that reached out to blue water. Julia stopped them all and said, “Today we’re going to be part of a nature survey.”

She started unloading string and tape measures from her backpack as she gestured back toward the creek they’d crossed. “Yesterday, you listed ways that San Francisquito Creek could be changed to limit future flooding. Many of you made suggestions for increasing water flow under the bridges and adjusting the creek bed to handle the increased flow. Well, the powers that be are still arguing about the bridges upstream, but they’ve widened the channel around the creek on this side of the freeway. This fall they plan to lower the levee at this bend,” she pointed to a bend in the raised path perpendicular to them, “To allow excess water to drain into the Faber tract over here.” She waved at the mud and swampland.

Lily felt like she’d been spun around and plopped in front of a “You Are Here” sign. The slow water under the bridge was the same creek they’d worked on yesterday. The raised mound of dirt they were walking on was part of a levee system built to keep water in when the creek or bay rose, but the part by the bend was going to be lowered to allow overflow into what looked like dried up marshland. Lily gazed across what Julia had called the Faber tract and felt a warm tingle as the dried mud shimmered in the sunlight.

“The Faber tract is owned and protected by the city of Palo Alto, even though it’s officially in East Palo Alto and part of San Mateo County. It is home to many plants and birds.” She handed out laminated cards with plants pictured on one side and birds on the other. “You will each have a one meter square ‘quadrat’ to check for any of the plants on this card. We will keep a group tally of any birds we spot from the flipside of the card. Do all of you know about ‘quadrat sampling’?”

Lily shook her head slightly. Since she was standing to the back of the group, no one but Julia saw. Julia simply continued by saying, “Tandena, can you explain?”

“Okay,” Tandena continued to face Julia like she was giving an answer for a teacher rather than explaining to a group, but Lily was glad not to be singled out. “You start with a map that breaks a site into one meter squares with numbers. Then you take a wire frame or string and mark each square you need to sample. Then you count how many of each thing you find in your square.”

“Thanks, Tandena,” Julia said. “Here ‘s the map,” she pulled out what looked like an aerial photo printed on graph paper with some squares in the bottom half marked in red. Julia unfolded a metal frame that locked into position: one meter square with perfect corners. “There are markers here along the trail and these strings that are colored red at one meter intervals. I’ll check your compass bearing as each of you begins. Please don’t remove your quadrat until I come out to certify your location and your plant identifications.”

Julia started handing out quadrat assignments, string, stakes, compasses, and measuring tapes. Lily was at the back of the group. Her marker was one of the farthest out, 53.25. The marker looked shiny and new beside the paved path that might once have had a line down the center but was now cracked and crumbling along the edges.

Waiting by her marker, Lily was glad the others would have already started by her turn and wouldn’t have to see her ask stupid questions. Maybe the others only knew about quadrats because they’d been in programs like this before. Maybe they’d known about creeks the day before because they’d grown up near creeks that might flood. But as Lily turned the compass back and forth in her palm, she felt that if she belonged with these Palo Alto kids, she’d at least be able to figure out a compass.

“I have no idea what I’m doing here,” Lily said when her turn came.

Julia smiled. “Don’t worry. Half of them will be in the wrong place when I go to check. I’ll show you how to get your bearings the first time, and you’ll be as qualified as anyone by the end of the day.”

It turned out it wasn’t that hard to measure from a marker, take a compass bearing, and set out string to place a one meter square. Lily didn’t have much growing in her dried out patch of dirt. She had plenty of time to wait before Julia could check on everyone else and come back to certify her work. Kneeling on the ground by her quadrat made Lily extremely aware of the earth beneath her. It pulled her with a staticky warmth that begged to have her fingers in the soil. As soon as she was done identifying what she thought were cord grass and pickleweed, she turned her back to the rest of the Conservation Corps and sank her fingers into the soil.

Her eyes hardly had time to close. It was as easy to feel the power here as to feel the sun on her face, and that power flowed through her with an eagerness she hadn't experienced in Hawaii. The bright sun made it harder for her to see the glowing dots that usually represented animals when she did this, but she could feel them tugging at her as if attached by little kite strings. She looked in the direction of the strongest tug, opened her eyes, and saw a large white bird slowly stalking toward her along a channel of water. It was at least three feet tall with a long yellow beak and its neck curved in a S-shape. As Lily stared, she felt the pull between herself and the glamorous bird growing stronger and stronger.

Then she closed her eyes, trying to see if there were other dots of life around her. There were dozens, and Lily became a little worried. She felt exposed and tried to stop what she was doing, but she couldn’t make her hands let go of the soil.

The super-sized bird kept coming, each leg lifting with a jerk and then extending. The pull between herself and it seemed calm and steady. She tried to focus on that and not on the other worried tugs from the smaller birds. Squinting her eyes so she barely saw the large white bird, she tried to calm the other dots of life, to tell them not to come to her, that she was only watching. It seemed to work. As the bird came within five meters of where Lily was sitting still and silent, the other creatures she’d sensed moved short distances in random directions, as if going about their normal bird or animal business.

Then something pulled her from the left. Her pupils swiveled behind slit eyes, fixing on a clump of tall grass, cord grass, if she had that right from her card. She could sense the tug of a small creature somewhere behind it. No, there were two small creatures moving together, drawn toward her from somewhere behind the cord grass. This connection worried Lily. It seemed outside her control, just as she couldn’t remove her fingers from the soil.

The creatures felt small and nervous, but they exuded curiosity, like the pull felt as odd to them as it did to her. She opened her eyes wider and watched where they were coming from. The white bird was now merely a ghost standing silently to her right.

Two little birds emerged from the cord grass. They were black and white, with little white lines in the black above their eyes that looked like eyebrows. Their white bellies and black backs waddled a bit as they walked, and put Lily in mind of penguins. But they were smaller than penguins and didn’t walk quite so upright. Something childlike in their movement made Lily want to protect them. It also made them fun to watch. They weren’t beautiful like the giant white bird, but they captured Lily’s attention in a way the other bird hadn’t.

A soft click behind her caused Lily to turn and see Julia using her cell phone to take a picture. She wasn’t photographing the lovely, enormous bird now standing less than three meters away. She was focused on the two little black and white birds that Lily had been watching.

Lily felt a trembling, almost like her body felt when she was extremely nervous, in the pull between herself and the birds. Julia’s presence empowered her to draw her fingers from the soil and watch the two small birds scamper off until they were safely hidden behind tall plants. The large bird turned a bit and walked off in a different direction.

“Wow,” Julia whispered, very, very quietly.

Lily froze, as if not moving would protect her secret.

“That’s a great egret. You can tell by the black feet and being two or three times the size of the more common snowy egrets. But those little birds—I’m not sure, but I think those might have been ancient murrelets. I’ll try to find out.” While Julia texted something on her cell phone, Lily felt her insides uncoil. Losing control of the magic was bad enough, but at least Julia didn’t seem to suspect. Lily watched the great egret pick its way back toward the bay, and she wondered about ancient murrelets.

 

 

 

 

 

2

Murrelets

The next morning, Lily was wondering about the two penguinesque black and white birds as she spread peanut butter on toast and practiced taking photos with her cell phone. Although she’d never been a big fan of talking or texting, the desire to photograph her birds brought a new fondness for the object.

Rose stumbled into the kitchen still in pajamas, and Lily snapped a photo.

“Hey, I thought I was the evil sister.” The appearance conscious middle schooler tried to smooth a night’s worth of bed head using only her fingers and no mirror.

Lily zoomed in for a close-up of her sister’s forehead.

“I’m practicing my nature photography. I’ll call this Littleus Sisterus emerging from burrow.”

“Hard to believe, but you have found a way to use a cell phone to become a geek.”

“Become? We’ve been circus geeks since Seattle.”

“Circus geek is a term of affection. And I don’t see you juggling your toast or anything.”

Two more slices popped from the toaster, and Lily held them aloft and said, “I’d try, if I had one more without peanut butter.”

“No sense of adventure.” Rose grabbed and bit a warm, plain piece of toast.

When the Conservation Corps gathered at Rinconada Park that morning, Julia told them to hold all questions until they reached the Faber Tract. Lily rode her conspicuously different bike and thought about her conspicuously different birds.

When they reached the levee with the markers, Lily didn’t have to check numbers to know some woman was standing approximately where Lily had laid her quadrat the day before. Julia made a loud whistle noise with two fingers in her mouth.

It would have been cool if it sounded like some fancy birdcall, but it sounded more like a fan at a ball game. The woman turned and waved and started jogging back to the levee. She leaped over small channels and came down moving faster each time. It looked like she didn’t care about trampling the ecosystem, but she always landed on a clear spot, and her long strides meant she didn’t touch down as often. At the levee she scooped up a messenger bag and loped over to Julia and the Conservation Corps teens.

“Hey, I’m Kelly. I’m a lecturer at Stanford on Environmental Science, and I also study birds.” She reached into her messenger bag and pulled out a grainy page-sized picture of the black and white birds. “Julia sent me this photo of some birds you saw yesterday. Everyone listen closely,” she leaned forward and whispered theatrically, “Never turn your phone off if you have friends in the field. I would have come straight away if I’d seen this photo real-time.”

“Now, I can’t be sure from a cell phone photo, but these may be ancient murrelets. If so, they’ve never been sighted here before. Murrelets are Auks or members of the family Alcidae. Ancient murrelets are known to come this far or farther south, but usually they’re well out to sea where uprisings of cold water bring them tasty fish and crustaceans.” Kelly gnashed her teeth as she said “tasty” and everyone could tell she was far gone into her subject. “You see, these birds use their wings as much for swimming as for flying. They dive underwater to catch their food. Are you all following this?”

Everyone nodded, though perhaps a little sleepily, and Kelly pulled a book from her bag. She opened it to a post-it marked page that showed an ancient murrelet diving. There was a small close up to the side that showed the white marks like eyebrows that Lily had seen the day before. “This is an ancient murrelet, and they’re kind of notorious for getting knocked off course in storms. They can show up in crazy inland places. One made it as far as the Great Lakes a few years back. But the thing is, we haven’t had a storm in weeks. Murrelets do travel in pairs sometimes. It might be that if one was hurt the other would stay, but they’d have to find some alternate food source nearby. Anyway, I thought I’d join you today. In case these birds turn up again, we can get a positive ID.”

Kelly grinned with bright white teeth.

Lily tried to guess how old she was. Her eyes crinkled at the edges, but her hair was short with dramatic bleached streaks that looked more like a college student than a teacher. Lily wasn’t sure what it meant to be a lecturer at Stanford, but she wondered if maybe it was something like a junior professor. Kelly looked like a fun junior professor. Lily enjoyed listening to her. Of course, she’d been talking about the subject Lily most wanted to hear at the moment, but some other people in the group seemed caught up too. Audrey was still gazing at the post-it marked picture, Pete was sketching his own copy, and a couple of girls were smiling back at Kelly. Other than Julia and Lily, no one else had even seen the supposed murrelets, but they were all in it together now.

Julia broke the silence. “So, everyone ready to set up new quadrats?”

Then they all started talking at once.

“What do we do if we see the ancient murrelets?”

“We don’t know that’s what they are.”

“We stay quiet like with any bird.”

“But we have to call Kelly.”

All eyes went back to Kelly.

“Phone me,” she said, holding up her orange and black phone cover. Then she recited her number as everyone dutifully typed it into their phones. “I’ll set it on vibrate and look around if I get a call. Try to raise a limb slowly if you have a sighting. Then we won’t make any noise.”

After that, Julia handed out tape measurers, string, and new assignments based on the same marked up aerial photograph they’d used the day before.

“Could I be near where I was yesterday?” Lily asked.

            Julia tilted her head, “If you want.”

            Lily nodded, and Julia gave her a conspiratorial squeeze on the shoulder. Lily walked again to marker 53.25 and then straight out past where she’d been before. She sat and her fingers itched to dig into earth, but she was determined to keep control. First, she made herself pull out her cell phone. Then she thought it might be suspicious if the birds came right away, so she set up her quadrat and spent a while observing and counting plants. She started to feel the special connections pulling at her. Her fingers seemed magnetically drawn to the ground every time they passed close.

The grass in front of her barely moved, and the morning grew still and hot. On her bike, Lily had been a bit chilled. She’d worn a jersey with three quarter sleeves to keep off the worst of the sun, but now she rolled the sleeves up to her shoulders. She watched the clump of cord grass by where she’d seen her strange birds before, but there wasn’t a bird, or even a lizard or bug to be seen today. Still, she could feel little tugs all around her as she finished her survey.

After what seemed like hours, Lily checked her phone and saw only minutes had passed. She stared harder at the marshlands, determined to find some sign of the life that pulled at her, but nothing moved.

Closing her eyes, she finally let the soft ground grab her fingers; the moment was electric. A dozen points of light glowed in the grasses before her. They pulled at her like eager little hands, and she pulled back with the delight of her discovery. All the points started moving toward her. One low to the ground moved very fast, and Lily peeked through her lids enough to see a tiny brown mouse scamper up to a clump of weeds barely beyond her reach. She smiled then looked farther to see four small brown birds flutter at the edge of the tall grasses and a couple of small waders stalking cautiously toward her. Then three smaller egrets emerged, and she looked at their feet to see they were yellow and proudly identified them as snowy egrets. Lily felt a warmth very different from the sun almost burn her from inside, but she was happy. It was like performing on circus silks when she had completed an audience-pleasing drop.

With her eyes now fully open, she tried to stop pulling any of the animals toward her. She sat surrounded. The tiny mouse stared at her, and she stared back. The three snowy egrets poked along the edge of the reeds where a channel in the marsh still held mud. Lily watched as they found food barely below the surface, although she couldn’t see what they ate. She closed her eyes again, but whatever they caught was too small to show in her other vision.

After watching the mouse and birds parade as glowing blobs on her closed eyelids, she started thinking about the black and white birds from before. There’d been a certain nervous energy to them, almost like a specific wavelength they emitted. Lily reached out with her mind, or whatever part of her sensed creatures as light. She sought the pull of the black and white birds in a way she hadn’t tried before. It was as if she stretched among the lights around her, and the fear of losing herself, of spreading too thin, rose like a murky soup within her. The flow of air across her skin and the tension of muscles holding her in place blended with the land, big and deep and warm.

There was no worry or uncertainty left. Lily was immense and at ease. She enjoyed finding the birds, almost the way she’d enjoy identifying a pleasant smell on the breeze. Long before her thinking told her she’d found them, she knew. Her magic pulled those two connections a little tighter. She wasn’t sure how far away they were. Their pull was clear and distinct but not all that strong. Lily tried to draw back into herself a bit more. At first she had no idea where her body was, but then she felt the warm sun on her back and the dampness of her hair under her wide brimmed hat. The sensations and security of her own body were refreshing like a splash of cold water, but the birds’ pull seemed fuzzier and less distinct inside herself. She didn’t dare open her eyes. Instead, she clung to the vibration, the tug of nervous energy that she recognized from the day before. She faced toward it and saw two bright dots glowing through her eyelids. They were farther away than where the little mouse still hid, beyond and to the left of where the snowy egrets now foraged.

Lily still couldn’t judge the distance, but the two little birds huddled somewhere between her and the bay. They hadn’t left the marshlands overnight. Lily tried to call them, to pull them toward her without pulling any of the other animals she sensed. It didn’t work at first, and Lily wondered if she should walk out to them. Would she end up in the wet part of the marshlands? Would she get in trouble for going too far from the group?

Lily tried to stop thinking like a person. She thought about her breathing instead and gradually increases the pull from her to the two special birds, being careful not to lose herself in the warm power of the earth. When it finally worked, it felt more like the birds were pulling her. She could feel them reeling themselves in on the imaginary line she’d sent out for them. It was a nervous feeling but also warm. She realized the same heat that she’d felt inside when she sensed all the animal now rubbed a little inside her, generating warmth like a rope sliding against her skin. It was in her middle someplace, and not up in her mind or brain like she’d imagined when seeking the birds. She felt them coming closer and their pull was an almost physical itch that wanted to be eased.

All of a sudden, she remembered about calling Kelly but was afraid to open her eyes. If only she hadn’t been so cell phone shy, she’d be able to call without seeing the phone. Or she could have prepped the phone to only need her to press one button, but she hadn’t.

The two little birds came very close and hesitated. Their pull felt increasingly jiggly, and Lily somehow understood that meant the birds were nervous. She opened her eyes a bit and tried to watch in the right direction. The two birds crept a little nearer, and Lily saw them at the base of the last big stand of reeds. She wanted to call them forward to the clump of weeds where the little mouse sat, but the mouse wouldn’t like that, and Lily didn’t know how to send him away. Despite her inattention, he seemed quite happy where he was.

She tried to hold her connection to the black and white birds without urging them closer. After a moment, it seemed to work. The birds stayed where they were beneath the reeds, and their tug on Lily became steady. Slowly she opened her cell phone, pushed for the number she’d programmed in, pressed call, and slowly raised one arm.

The effort was too much, and Lily realized she’d lost her sense of the animals pulling on her. She closed her eyes, set down the phone, and dug her fingers back into the soil. Finding the murrelets, or whatever they were, was easy and almost instant. They seemed to startle in the moment she found them, skittering behind the reeds but then creeping back out.

The mouse seemed to notice them then. He turned so that instead of facing Lily he was watching the two birds. It made the birds nervous again, although they didn’t move. Squinting through her lashes, Lily could almost picture the pull that connected her to the two little birds, but it seemed like that pull was curved toward the mouse now. She wanted to separate him, maybe even to send him away. Instead, his pull on her seemed to grow stronger and the birds notice him more and more.

When one of the black and white birds took two tiny steps out from the reeds, Lily felt the connection jiggle and turn to static. She tried not to draw the bird any further but realized it wasn’t heading toward her exactly. It was hard to tell, with the mouse sitting right in front of her, but she thought the bird was watching the tiny mouse down low to the ground rather than focusing on her bigger human form higher up.

Almost naturally, a surge of heat from the soil around her fingers filled her and shifted her connections so whatever she felt for the birds passed through the mouse. In her mind’s eye the connections looked more stable and complete.

At some point Lily realized her eyes were closed again, and that she hadn’t exactly been thinking. Not knowing how much time had passed or when the birds had last moved, she opened her eyes slowly and saw that both awkward black and white birds were a couple yards away from her. They stood at the edge of a shadow cast by tall clumps of cord grass, watching the mouse that watched them back. With her eyes closed everything had seemed warm and right, but seeing the creatures stare at each other in the sunlit marsh seemed bizarre. Lily looked back over her shoulder but sensed before she saw that Kelly was crouched a couple yards further back, wielding a camera with a long lens sticking out.

A sudden scuttling noise caused Lily to turn and see the mouse practically throw itself across the open space and into the reeds. The two little birds retreated in a wobblier but still hasty manner. Lily looked up, expecting to see a bird of prey, but saw not even a shadow. The blue sky soothed her and the soil around her fingers reached up with tickling warmth, but Lily carefully extracted her fingers and looked back toward Kelly who was still watching the place where the birds had retreated into the tall grass. Lily realized she’d held one arm in the air all this time and felt her shoulder protest as she brought it down.

Putting a cap on her camera lens, Kelly settled down onto the dirt. She pulled out her phone and rapidly typed.

Lily’s phone vibrated, and she found the text, “Positive ID on ancient murrelets. Endangered salt marsh harvest mouse 2. Will send link once I post.”

Lily’s phone didn’t have a browser. She wouldn’t be able to follow any link. Probably her phone was as out of place in Palo Alto as her bike, but at least Kelly wasn’t acting like Lily was a freak. Maybe she hadn’t been there for very long while Lily was out of her human mind. Maybe with Lily facing the marsh, it hadn’t been evident that her eyes were closed. She might have seemed to be keeping still and carefully watching the birds.

As Kelly moved away with hardly a rustle of grass, Lily went back to watching the marshlands with her ordinary senses. Very slowly, she worked the soil off of her fingers.

 

At lunch Kelly said, “If any of you want, you can come to my class next Tuesday. I’ll give Julia a map marking the building, and you can bike over after camp. I’m going to present about these murrelets and how sightings like this can affect conservation strategies.”

Audrey whispered to Lily, “Did you look at her link?”

Lily shook her head.

Audrey passed her phone, pointing at the bottom of the screen, and said in a slightly too loud whisper, “She didn’t give you credit.”

Lily wanted to scroll up to see the picture and whatever else might be there, but instead she looked at a line below the GPS location of the sighting that said, “Spotted during a routine vegetation survey by the Youth Conservation Corps.”

“That’s fine,” Lily said. She was going to ask if she could read the rest but Audrey quickly grabbed the phone back.

“Get a backbone. Something like this could stand out on your college applications, but no one else is going to fight your battles for you.” Audrey turned away and paged to something else on her phone.

Lily felt like she’d alienated the one person who might have become her friend from this group, but she didn’t necessarily want her name associated with the birds. If anything, she was glad Kelly hadn’t noticed her weird way of communing with nature. Maybe it was even good that Audrey was keeping her distance. Lily had a chance to explore her ability in a safe, secluded spot within biking distance of her new home. Perhaps the best she could hope for was to avoid everyone else’s notice.

 

At home that evening, Lily went online straight away to check out the post on the murrelets. Some of Kelly’s pictures showed Lily from behind, but it was unlikely anyone who didn’t know her could identify her based on that. She was merely useful to show scale and how willingly the birds had approached.

Lily opened her email intending to send the link to her parents who were both still at work. But she couldn’t resist reading her newest email first. It wasn’t from a familiar address, but it was hard not to notice X_man@calmail.berkeley.edu.

Hi Lily,

My change of address to you bounced, but by the time I got set up here, your change of address to my old account had forwarded to my new account. I’m at UC Berkeley! You’re in Palo Alto! That’s less than 50 miles. We should get together. Write!

Xavier

Lily couldn’t believe it. After two moves for her and one for him, she’d ended up in the same state as Xavier, within fifty miles evidently.

After the momentary excitement, Lily wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that. Xavier had been the one thing she regretted leaving in New Mexico. He’d been the first person she confided in when rediscovered magic in Hawaii. However, he wasn’t exactly a comfortable person to know. He’d blocked her way on a bike path the first time they met, and they’d only been friends for a couple of week s before she moved. In Farmington, New Mexico he’d tried to pass himself off as a slightly crazy delinquent who shouldn’t be messed with, but if what Lily had heard about all the eccentric and flamboyant characters around Berkeley was true, he’d only seem unusual there by being too ordinary.

A strange tingling spread from her fingers on the keyboard through her arms to her center. Lily couldn’t think how to reply, and she wasn’t sure if what she felt was nerves, joy, or something related to her magic. She stood and shook out her arms before she managed to type,

Wow, that’s so weird. Yeah, we should get together. Let me know when.

Lily

Then she sent the link about the birds to him, her parents, and even Rose.

 

The next morning was Saturday and her dad was up early, trimming bushes in the backyard. “Did you come out to practice on the rig?” He waved to where her practice trapeze hung, on the rig he’d assembled two days before. Lily hadn’t tried it out yet.

“You’re eager.”

“Didn’t you miss it?”

“A little.” Lily’s hands clenched as if grabbing the bar even as she denied caring that much.

“I was remembering how popular it was with Rose’s friends on the first day of school in New Mexico.”

“She got stung by a scorpion.”

“That had nothing to do with the rig, and there aren’t any scorpions in Palo Alto.”

Lily nodded, momentarily distracted by thoughts about the bark scorpion, a scorpion rarely found in Farmington, New Mexico where her sister had been stung. Could her power have called animals back then without her even knowing?

For a moment, every muscle in Lily’s back tensed with worry. Her hands felt numb and no longer ached to grab a trapeze bar, as she considered how few animals she’d seen in New Mexico. If she’d been drawing them to her, there would have been more, even in the desert, she told herself. Besides, there was lots of other magic building up in that place last year. If magic had anything to do with the bark scorpion, it must have been the larger magic of that place and time.

Lily didn’t quite believe her rationalization and suddenly felt uncomfortable standing outside with her dad. “Okay if I go biking?”

“I guess. Where and for how long?”

“Just out to the Faber Tract where I saw those murrelets. I can’t help wondering if they’re still around. It’s over the bike bridge and down the frontage road. I’ll be back in an hour or two tops, and I have my phone.”

“Fine. See you at lunch.”

It took only five minutes to bike from Lily’s house to the pump station where she left her bike. Having figured out how the bike paths connected to her new house gave her a sense of knowing her new community. It turned out that she lived amazingly close to her murrelets, compared to the ride from Rinconada Park where her group met each day.

There was no one in sight when she locked up her bike and walked out to marker 53.25. She turned and walked even farther than her second quadrat this time, to within a couple yards of the reeds and tall grasses, the little channel of water.

For a moment she merely sat, feeling the sun on her back and listening to the rustles and clicks in the near silence around her. Then she dug her fingers into the ground and let the magical warmth flood her. It felt welcome and right pouring through her this time, and she was less frightened of losing herself. Lots of little glowing spots appeared in front of her, mostly near the ground. She sought the pattern of her murrelets and found them not far away. Trying to focus on the connections between herself and each of the local creatures, she thought she found the great egret from two days ago and the salt marsh harvest mouse from yesterday, but she wasn’t sure if the familiarity represented the same individual or only the same type of animal. As a sort of experiment, she attempted to tug gently at only the familiar connections.

The bonds she’d identified grew tighter, pulling her as she pulled. Several other bright spots were working their way toward her as well. It felt like they were trying to pull her, but Lily figured it must feel that way from both sides. She attempted to control her power more precisely, to let only the familiar connections draw tighter, but the other animals kept coming anyway. Maybe the energy involved attracted them.

Lily opened her eyes halfway as the mouse scampered to the edge of the nearest vegetation. He’d come from a different direction today and didn’t line up or seem to affect her connection with the murrelets. He stayed mostly hidden as the great egret strutted into the open and poked at the muddy channel among the reeds.

Lily felt the individual connections with the mouse and the egret more distinctly than before, even with her eyes open. She was able to let those connections relax as a small songbird fluttered up and gave a two-toned trill. Then Lily was able to relax the pulls she sensed from other nearby animals. She was focusing back on her murrelets when she heard a twig snap behind her. The mouse vanished into the reeds as Lily looked over her shoulder. She saw Audrey, and her insides jolted but her fingers stayed rooted to the ground.

Audrey nodded, and Lily closed her eyes for a moment to double check if Audrey glowed. She didn’t, and Lily was momentarily relieved and then faintly sad. She faced forward with eyes closed and spotted the murrelets still approaching. Then she turned and motioned with her free hand for Audrey to join her.

Audrey crept forward and sat cross legged on the dirt. She pulled out her phone and typed, but instead of sending the text, she held it out for Lily to see.

            C murrelets yet?

Lily shook her head and shrugged.

The great egret continued to poke along the small wet channel nearby, and Audrey watched for several minutes, sitting very still. Lily only closed her eyes to check once, but she could feel the murrelets approaching. Their connection to her had taken on the shaky, less distinct feel that she thought meant the birds were nervous. She wasn’t sure if they were nervous because they sensed Audrey or if they had picked up something from Lily’s initial startle. She tried to remember if they’d gotten distinctly more nervous when Kelly or Julia came out, but she couldn’t quite recall.

It seemed very odd that each time she’d come here to try her magic some other person had come up behind her. Her magic didn’t seem to influence humans, at least none but those few who glowed when her eyes were closed. But now she worried the pull might affect things in ways she hadn’t guessed. The first time she’d noticed a magical connection, to Makana in Hawaii, who had her own healing magic, a little boy named Max had been connected with Makana. Lily seemed to bend the connection, the way the mouse had redirected Lily’s connection to the murrelets yesterday. She wondered if Audrey might affect her connection to the birds or might be drawn by the magic even if she didn’t know. Lily’s stomach contracted around all the hard questions as the murrelets poked into sight.

Audrey didn’t make a sound, but a slight shift in her gaze let Lily know she’d spotted them. Lily glanced at Audrey beside her and saw how her eyes seemed to open a little wider and the corners of her mouth curved up a bit at seeing these special birds.

Casually, Lily pulled her hand from the soil, not wanting to compel the birds any farther. She still felt a gentle cord through her middle connecting her to the murrelets, but the warmth and awareness of everything around her faded. She felt cold in her center and suddenly worried much more about what Audrey might have seen, thought, or felt. Being with her birds was no longer pleasant, and she felt the connection between them fade away. Soon the birds turned back into the cord grass. The mouse and egret left as well.

Audrey typed on her phone again:

            OK to talk?

Lily nodded.

“Were you here all morning?” Audrey whispered.

“Just a little while.” Lily guessed Audrey would still assume she’d been here longer than she had, but that seemed best.

“They should credit you with the sighting.”

“I really don’t mind.”

Audrey shrugged. “Are you planning to major in a life science?”

“Uh, I have no idea. Are you?”

“Maybe. I liked my bio class last year, and I went to a three week marine science camp before this Conservation Corps thing.”

“Huh, they have marine science camps here?”

Audrey nodded.

“I did a lot of snorkeling and surfing this summer, but I never thought of looking for a camp. I wonder if they had that in Hawaii?”

“Oh, yeah. I read about a cool one, but—Well, the one I went to was up north of the bay.”

Audrey seemed to check herself and look away after mentioning the camp in Hawaii. Lily wondered if Audrey regretted not going there or didn’t want Lily to feel stupid for not knowing about it when she’d lived in Hawaii. Lily did wish she’d known. She wasn’t sure if she’d have given up her free weeks of swimming and surfing, but she would have liked to know her choices. People her age seemed better informed in Palo Alto. It hadn’t occurred to Lily before this move that there might be camps for kids her age specialize in thing like marine science. She hadn’t gone to camp in years, but the day they’d arrived in Palo Alto, a neighbor had suggested the Conservation Corps.

Audrey whispered, “I think I’ll head out now.”

Lily wondered if she’d been rude. She wasn’t sure if she liked Audrey or not, but she didn’t want to mess things up just in case. “Me too,” she said.

They walked back to the pumping station then biked together as far as the bike bridge over the freeway. They walked their bikes through the barrier poles at the ends like they were supposed to and Lily asked, “Do you want to come by my house? It’s only a couple blocks from this bridge.”

“Sure,” Audrey said, and it was settled.

When they stashed their bikes in the back yard, Audrey couldn’t help but notice the circus rig. “What’s that?”

“It’s a practice rig for circus, something my sister and I got into when we lived in Seattle.”

“Wow, it’s big.”

“It just looks big because the yard is small. Want to try out the trapeze?”

“Sure,” Audrey shrugged.

Lily didn’t know if the circus rig could help her attract friends the way it had for Rose before, but at least it would give her something to do with Audrey for a while. She had no idea what teens in Palo Alto expected. Opening the rear door of the garage and looking around for the mat, Lily was momentarily terrified that she’d summon another scorpion. Then she told herself scorpions definitely didn’t live close enough, and her magic didn’t seem to work on anything as small as spiders, which might well live in this garage. The blue mat was huge and hard to miss, and Lily was only a little over cautious as she picked it up and dragged it out.

Lily kicked off her shoes and stood on the mat beneath the trapeze. “Well, you can get on like this.” Lily demonstrated a basic Rock-and-Roll onto the bar. “Then you can try hanging moves like this or this.” She hung by an arm and ankle for Angel and then with both legs wrapped around one rope for Candlestick. “Or you can do things above the bar.” She quickly demonstrated Starfish with her arms and legs out in an “X” and Birds Nest with her feet above her head on the ropes. They were all moves people learned early on in trapeze classes, and Lily’s only concession to showing off was that she kept her legs straight and toes pointed to make each move look its best. Then she hopped down to give Audrey a turn.

Audrey removed her shoes a little more slowly. She had no trouble getting a leg up on the bar and then figuring how to haul herself up using the ropes. Without hesitation, she proceeded to do pretty much all the moves except Candlestick that Lily had shown her.

“Wow. You’ve never done this before?” Lily asked.

“No, but I used to do gymnastics, dance and ice skating. I don’t have time for that sort of stuff anymore.”

Lily thought that was a little sad given how well Audrey moved, but Audrey didn’t seem to care. “So what are you into now?”

“Mostly school takes up my time during the school year. And then there’s all the extra stuff that looks good for college, like volunteering and school clubs and so on.”

“You think about college a lot, don’t you?’

“Not especially.”

Nonetheless, Audrey mentioned college planning at least three more times as they practiced trapeze and shared some lunch. It started Lily thinking about college, too.

 

When Audrey left, Lily checked her email. Xavier had replied:

I still have a week before classes start. You’re welcome here any time. Or I think I can get there by public transit. Just say when.

Lily replied:

When! Can you come tomorrow? Want to see some birds?

And almost instantly, Xavier wrote back:

            Sure. I can be there by eleven. I’ll bring binoculars.

 

Sunday at eleven thirty, Xavier showed up on their porch. He’d had a sort of wiry strength to him back in New Mexico, but something had changed. Lily didn’t know if he’d grown taller or his shoulders were broader. Maybe his face had more angles and fewer curves. He looked a lot older and put simply, a lot cuter. He wore jeans that were not new, and a black tee shirt that looked like it might be. His hair was dark and clean and settled neatly into place. Lily couldn’t tell if he’d put effort into taming it or if the greater humidity did that for him.

After a moment, Xavier said, “Should I come in, or are we going right out to see the birds?”

Lily stepped back to clear the doorway. “Come in. Dad’s packing us lunch. You can say ‘hi.’”

“Hey, Xavier,” Lily’s dad leaned out from the kitchen. “Leanne and Rose are out shopping, but we’re hoping you’ll stay through dinner to see them.”

The conversation moved into the kitchen, where Xavier put his backpack on the table as Lily’s dad kept assembling stuff at the counter. “I’d be happy to stay, but I might need a ride across the bridge if it goes late. I can take the BART train from Fremont, but the buses from here to there aren’t that great on Sundays. That’s why I’m late.”

“No worries. We can take you all the way to Berkeley if you want.”

“The Fremont BART station would be fine. I brought you some corn from the farmer’s market in Berkeley.” He pulled six ears of corn still in their husks from his pack.

Lily’s dad pulled back the husks to reveal a few yellow kernels, “Look’s great. You must be pretty well settled in.”

Xavier’s mouth pursed, and Lily guessed he’d stumbled upon the farmers’ market on his way to catch a train. “And I brought these for you and Rose,” he said to Lily as he placed two fancy bookmarks on the table. Both looked to be handmade paper with multicolored strands and specks in each and clever folding to make the top look like an origami bird. One was mostly oranges and reds and the other was mostly blues and purples. Lily chose the latter and Xavier nodded like he’d expected that. She wondered if he knew her that well.

“Thanks,” Lily said.

“I didn’t want to get anything that said ‘UC Berkeley,’ because I hear this is Stanford territory and that we’re rivals.”

“Huh, how’d you choose Berkeley?” Lily asked, remembering how obsessed Audrey was with college.

“The lovely climate and culture.”

“Seriously.”

“They were by far the best school that accepted me.”

Lily’s dad chimed in with, “Berkeley is a very good school. Lily’s mother went there.”

“I never would have guessed,” Xavier said, sounding honestly perplexed.

“Before she became an accountant, she never wore makeup or shaved her legs.”

“That’s great, dad. I think you’ve got more than enough lunch for us there,” Lily said.

He raised his eyebrows and gave her his best lopsided grin, but he didn’t go on to tell embarrassing stories of how he met her mother.

Xavier smiled and offered to help load food into his recently unloaded backpack. Her dad gave Xavier the key for his bike lock.

 

There wasn’t any shade on the levee at noon. Lily and Xavier had to back track to find a picnic spot. Instead of the marshlands, they watched the creek trickle by at the bottom of its newly widened channel.

“Stuffed tomatoes,” Xavier exclaimed as he laid out the food. “Melon wrapped in prosciutto, baguette with spinach cheese spread—your dad went all out.”

“I think he’s still embarrassed about his behavior that night in the desert.”

“No need. I was worried I’d be sucked in.” Xavier tidily spread spinach dip onto bread.

“You worried ahead. He was embarrassed after.” Lily paused, “I’ve got more to tell you.”

“I sort of figured.”

Lily stared at him, not sure where to begin. On one hand, this was Xavier, the person who’d seen the magic in New Mexico with her and even tried to help her research the magical places in Hawaii. On the other hand, she’d barely kept in touch with him after those few intense weeks almost a year ago. He sometimes spied on people or manipulated confrontations, and she hadn’t even known where he was until yesterday.

“Go ahead, eat something,” he said. “Your dad makes excellent nosh, and we should enjoy it.”

Lily inspected a tomato stuffed with tuna salad then set it back down.

“Xavier, what would you say if I told you I could do my own kind of magic now?”

“Cool?” He poked his head forward like a puppy checking for a scent.

“Mostly it’s not so useful. When I’m outdoors, especially in certain places that are maybe older or more natural, I can close my eyes and see little dots of light wherever there are animals. It works better if my fingers or toes are touching the ground, and sometimes I can see pretty far and right through plants and stuff.” She stopped and waited while he finished a messy piece of cantaloupe and wiped his hands on a cloth napkin.

“That’s how you spotted the birds?”

“How’d you know I spotted them?”

He spread his hands as if it was obvious.

“When I do,” she hesitated, “this, there’s sometimes a connection between me and the animals, and I think they’re kind of drawn to me, or they can be. So three days in a row I’ve been able to sit out near the marsh and call the murrelets to me. There’s a mouse and a great egret that I can call separately too, maybe. And there’s more. I think sometimes I connect to humans, maybe only to people with some sort of magic or whatever. But my friend Makana and my dad both glow when I close my eyes that way, and I think sometimes there’s a connection that makes them more likely to do what I want. I’m trying hard to control that, but it’s pretty unpredictable.”

“That’s awesome, much cooler than I’d ever have guessed.” Xavier's bright smile twisted into something smaller and lopsided. “But you look upset. Does it bother you that much?”

“Bother me?” Her voice squeaked, and she took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s easy for you to accept, but a year ago I didn’t believe in magic. I still have trouble believing it. How does this fit with physics and biology and all that? What exactly could connect me to a bird? Is it like a radio transmission? Will some government guy show up and take me away? Will I wake up in a padded room and find I dreamed the whole last year?” Lily didn’t mean to, but she was starting to tear up. That made her more upset, like she couldn’t control her own body anymore.

“It’s okay.” Xavier moved over beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. It felt safe and real, and Lily leaned her head against his shoulder and immediately calmed down. Then she realized her skin felt tingly all over, especially where Xavier was touching her. If she’d ever wondered if she was interested in guys or in Xavier in particular, this pretty much answered that. What awkward timing. She wanted to kiss him and see if he’d kiss back. She breathed in and somehow even sweaty after a bike ride in the sun, Xavier smelled good. Lily’s neck stretched, bringing her face closer to his neck and maybe his lips. But she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself just because he’d tried to comfort her. He was in college now, and he’d never expressed any interest in her before.

She pulled away and picked up her stuffed tomato. He didn’t jerk his arm away, but he didn’t pull her back either.

“After lunch, I thought maybe you’d like to see the murrelets,” she said. “And maybe you could tell me if you see anything else strange when I call them.”

“Sure,” Xavier straightened up, back to how he’d been sitting before. His eyes shifted from Lily’s face to someplace over her shoulder. The two of them went back to eating, and Xavier caught her up on how things had gone in Farmington after she left. Mostly it sounded like people forgot about her and anything unusual they’d seen. Even the kids at school went back to mostly ignoring Xavier after the whole thing blew over.

When they’d finished lunch, Lily asked Xavier to wait at the 53.25 marker on the levee while she went out and called the murrelets. “Stay here until it’s all done, okay?”

“No problem.” He looped his binoculars around his neck. “Are you supposed to be out there?”

Lily turned toward him as she thought about it. “Dunno. It was allowed for the vegetation survey with the Youth Conservation Corps. I guess if anyone asked, I could say I was following up.”

“Okay,” Xavier sat at the edge of the levee with his feet on the downward slope as Lily walked out. A bicyclist passed behind him without sparing either of them a glance. Xavier’s hands, holding the binoculars, rested on his knees with long limbed ease. To Lily, he looked as he had up on his roof in New Mexico, and she forgot all the ways he’d seemed different when she’d first opened the door that morning.

She walked out to where her second quadrat had been and sat down on the dirt. Only once, she glanced back and saw Xavier wave before she faced toward the bay and dug her fingers into the soil.

The warm energy filled her, bringing her alive, almost burning through her. It felt better than it ever had before, and she found her link to the murrelets even before she noticed the dozens of other glowing dots around her. She sensed the small moving animals throughout the protected area, but she didn’t reach out to any but the murrelets. The pair felt immediately focused and unworried as they picked their way through the plants and tall grasses toward her.

She didn’t peek even through slitted eyes until she was sure they’d cleared the tall grasses. Then she watched the black and white birds bob across the drier ground until they stood right in front of her, shaded by her shadow.

She glanced back over her shoulder to see if Xavier or anyone else might be drawing up behind her, but Xavier smiled cheerily from the levee. Lily closed her eyes in relief and saw his fiery outline continue to wave.

She turned her face away and jerked her hand from the ground. The murrelets startled, but they didn’t run immediately. Lily could still feel the connection pulling between her and the birds. She was grateful that she felt no pull between herself and Xavier. He had been lit up so brightly. How had she not expected that? How had she not even thought to check? Xavier’s mom had probably had the same kind of magic as Jen. Lily already knew that this happened with parents and kids, like her and her dad, like Makana and Makana’s mom. Why hadn’t she guessed that Xavier might glow? That Xavier might be susceptible to her magic?

She looked at the murrelets with eyes wide open and felt the connection between the birds and her fade. They made their way back to the concealing shrubbery as quickly as their stubby legs and upright bodies allowed. Lily took a deep breath and told herself she would want nothing of Xavier. She wouldn’t think about or talk to him if she could avoid it until they were safely back inside her house.

Self-consciously, she stood and made her way back to the levee, feeling like a waddling, out of place murellet.

Xavier reached out a hand to help her up the side of the levee, but she ignored it. “That was great,” he said with a smile that stirred feeling right through her. “Those birds walked right up to you like it was the most natural thing in the world. You could build a reputation as a birding guide or even go places to seek out endangered species.”

“Let’s head home,” Lily said. She walked ahead of him, not looking back. But his enthusiasm made her want to watch his face, to take his hands. She could feel the connection between them now that they were close, a faint, magnetic sort of pull. She tried to think about something else. How many quadrats had her conservation group checked all together? She tried to remember how many times each of them had set out. It was hard to figure, because some of them finished more quickly and could check three quadrats in the time it took others to check two.

“Are you upset about something? I watched through the binoculars, and I saw you jerk around at the end.”

The thought of him watching her made Lily wonder what he thought. If her magic could affect him from twenty yards out, could she have made him more interested in the birds? In her?

She tried to remember how many quadrats she had checked in two days' work. It must be fewer than anyone else because she’d spent so much time watching for murrelets. She thought she’d done five or six, but it seemed like she ought to know for sure when it was that few.

She heard Xavier footsteps thump up behind her and then his hand found her shoulder, stopping her as he came up alongside. “Wait, tell me what’s going on. Did I do something wrong?”

His touch was almost more than she could take. He was upset. She wanted to explain and be fair. She wanted him to like her, and she liked having him touch her. And she could feel the pull between them. It didn’t go away when he touched her, and it made her fear wanting anything in his presence.

She drew away. “Please, wait ‘til we’re back at my house and we can talk about it.”

She practically ran to her bike, put on her helmet, and started for home. She assumed Xavier was right behind her because he pulled at her like a nearly insubstantial anchor, but she tried not to think about it.

 

Once they were both inside her house, she shut the door and leaned against it.

“Well?” Xavier asked. His hair was damp and flattened from wearing her father’s bike helmet. His cheeks were red from the fast ride home. Lily half wanted to kiss him and half wished she’d never see him again. Then she was caught by the immediate practical dilemma of where they could talk. In the living room, there would be interruptions, but it didn’t feel right to take him into her bedroom.

“You’re starting to freak me out.” He said it in the nicest possible way, raising his eyebrows with something between curiosity and concern.

Lily decided she could have him in her bedroom now that they were safely inside and she could keep any random wants to herself.

“Come on. We can talk in my room.”

He followed her down the hall to the tiny light blue room that barely fit her bed, dresser and desk. She pulled out the desk chair for him then sat on the bed well out of reach.

He looked at her but didn’t say anything She pulled herself together to try and explain.

“Okay. There’s some stuff I left out before that maybe I should have left in.”

He looked at her, unknowable as a stone. She went on. “Did I mention that I think the humans who glow when I’m doing, well, what I do- Did I mention that they tend to have magic? Makana, her mom and brother, they each had something different. Her mom read auras, and she picked out some similarity between my aura and Makana’s that I thought might have something to do with what I see. My dad also glows, and he hasn’t figured out any magic of his own yet. Maybe it’s just that those people have the potential to develop magic. I don’t know.”

Xavier was smiling a bit now. She knew he’d guessed the first part, and he was happy about it. Maybe she should let him enjoy that before she told the rest. Maybe she was trying to wimp out.

“Okay, I think you’ve guessed that you’re one of the people who glows, but I’ve got to say the rest or I’m going to chicken out. I told you I can’t always control whatever I’m doing too well, right?”

He nodded, looking serious again, and Lily felt bad already for taking the smile off his face.

“Anyway, a couple time, with Makana and once with my dad, when we were outside and I felt connected to them and they were those sorts of people, well, a couple of times they did stuff or offered to do stuff, and I knew it wasn’t stuff they would normally offer to do.”

He looked distinctly worried now. Leaning forward, he studied her face as if the parts she was leaving out must be written there. Lily tensed through every muscle in her body, because she feared he might recoil at any moment now.

“They did stuff I wanted. It wasn’t even stuff I meant to want. Makana and I even tried some experiments, and I wasn’t very good at getting her to do stuff on purpose or at stopping myself from causing her to do stuff that wasn’t on purpose. She thinks that there are limits, that I probably couldn’t make someone do anything they were sincerely opposed to doing. And she thought she did better at resisting just by knowing the risk.”

There was silence. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and staring at his hands out in front of him. At least he hadn’t pulled away or said anything mean. But she wished he’d say something. She wanted to out wait him, but figured she ought to put the rest into words.

“You get it, don’t you?” He looked at her again, and she was glad they were indoors, because she wanted badly for him to reach out and hold her. She was sure it would have worked like magic out by the birds. “I saw you glowing where you waited on the levee. That’s why I startled. Maybe you’ve got some magic of your own or will sometime. But that also means other stuff that happened before might have been because I wanted it and influenced you. And this is pretty embarrassing, and I’d like you to say something even if you’re upset with me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make this harder for you. I was trying not to interrupt. Also, it’s taking me a little while to think it through, but I don’t think I have any reason to be upset with you.”

“Xavier, you do remember putting your arm around me out there, right? You’d never done anything like that before, and while I obviously must have wanted it on some level, I would never have wanted to manipulate you.”

He half rolled his eyes, and Lily tensed expecting the worst. “I don’t feel manipulated.” He smiled again. “And if you don’t think I’d want to touch you at least as much as you wanted me to, that’s probably because I was an idiot back in New Mexico. Things never are simple around you, are they?”

“Never.” She shook her head, but she was smiling a little now, too.

“I probably had a bit of a crush on you back in New Mexico, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t like me most of that time. Then it turned out you were leaving, so I tried to let it go. And something I wouldn’t tell you under normal circumstances, I came here today planning to be on my best behavior. I’m eighteen now. You’re not even sixteen, are you?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t want to cause trouble or interfere in your life here. I was worried out there that maybe I’d crossed the line, but honestly, I’m still not convinced you had anything to do with it. Maybe we can let it slide. This is weird, but not in a bad way.”

Lily couldn’t help smiling. Xavier said he liked her, had liked her a year ago, and was happy with everything he’d found out so far. That should be enough for one day, but she couldn’t stand the idea of him freaking out later.

“Well, I guess we can get along fine by email then, but you realize we probably don’t want to be outside together, right?”

Face suddenly blank, Xavier leaned back in the desk chair. “Give me a minute. You’ve had longer to think about this.” He didn’t make excuses or minimize. He didn’t stare at his hands. For a couple of minutes, he looked at her quietly, and it was hard to believe, but he started smiling again. “I have to admit, there may be such a thing as too much honesty. I’d like to say I’d be fine with whatever you’d want from me. But I think we’re both smarter than that. Maybe we shouldn’t get together outside for a while. We can both think about how to make this work, and maybe you’ll get better at controlling it, and then it won’t be a problem.”

Lily was amazed at the level of trust that implied, but somehow she wasn’t surprised. She’d almost forgotten how Xavier could jump in and work with whatever situation came up. He’d once pulled a fire alarm to save her from a bully. How had she not realized that he liked her?

“Your dad knows, you said?”

Her throat tightened for a moment, imagining he was referring to her feelings for him. She smiled and almost laughed at herself when she realized he was only referring to magic. “Yeah.”

“You’re going to tell him about me?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“No, I think I’d actually feel better if he knew. You understand?”

She felt herself giving a version of her dad’s crocked smile and nodding. “Should I go get him now?”

“He might kick me out before dinner.”

“Not unless he was planning to serve it outside.”

Lily stuck her head out the door and called, “Dad!”

“Yes!”

“Could you come in here when you get a minute?”

It took less than a minute. He stood in the doorway and Lily asked, “Are mom and Rose home?”

“They were. They might be outside.”

“Come in and close the door.” He did, but she could tell by the way he didn’t look around the room that he was puzzling through alternatives in his head.

“Have a seat dad.” Lily made room for him on the bed. “There’s something we want to tell you.”

Lily looked to Xavier, but he nodded back at her as if it had been her idea to have this conversation.

“Okay,” she began. “Remember that time in Hawaii when you offered to sit in the back seat and treat us all to ice cream and we only later figured out that it was because I wanted it but didn’t mean to even suggest it to you?”

Dad nodded, and he did glance at Xavier then.

“I don’t need to say the rest of this, do I?”

Her dad looked at her. “Out by the marshlands you had a similar experience with Xavier and also discovered that he shows up when you close your eyes?”

Lily sighed and felt her shoulders relax. “Yes. And he’s been very nice and not freaked out about it.”

“Okay,” her dad took a breath and his back grew a little straighter. “I guess there’s nothing I need to freak out about then either?”

Lily shook her head. Her dad looked to Xavier. “Would you mind having a word with me in private, son?”

Lily had never heard her dad say “son” to anyone. She wondered if this bore significance for the future.

Xavier said, “No problem,” and followed her dad out of the room.

In the next few minutes Lily imagined her dad asking any number of things or sharing some secret about how to block her mental suggestions. She sincerely hoped the latter guess was closer to the truth.

When Xavier returned she couldn’t help but ask, “What did he want?”

Xavier blushed. She wouldn’t have been able to tell if he’d been a few feet farther away, but at this distance she could see the color despite his tan.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.

“It’s okay. He’s a practical man. First, he asked what had happened. Then he asked my intentions.”

Lily felt her face grow hot and knew it showed a lot more on her.

“Want to play cards?” Xavier asked.

Lily agreed immediately. They played in the living room.

 

 

 

 

 

3

Changes

At their next meeting, the Conservation Corps was working on a redwood grove within Rinconada Park. They were measuring the trees, taking soil samples, and noting damage. At lunch Lily had sunk her fingers into the soil to check, but there wasn’t much power here. It was enough for her to identify every squirrel as a skittering glow, but not like what grabbed her in the Faber Tract.

Lily found herself thinking about Xavier a lot. Somehow the brief discussion with her father had crystallized their place in her life as the two people who knew and in some way shared her difference. Also, she’d had a very pleasant but embarrassing dream about kissing Xavier. If she was going to crush on a friend, it would help if she could learn to control herself in more ways than one. She tested her magic wherever she could, hoping that would help. She planned to keep visiting the Faber Tract as well, not only to check on the murrelets, but also as a baseline for refining her powers. Her connection to the murrelets, the great egret, and the salt marsh harvest mouse certainly seemed clearer and faster to form now. If she went every day for weeks, she might learn how to control what she did better. If she could improve on some aspects, like her control with the animals, that might tell her how to improve on others as well.

“You coming?” Audrey asked.

“Huh?”

“You’re really not paying attention this week, are you?” Audrey lowered her voice, “Is it a boy?”

Lily smiled at the simplicity of it. “Kind of.”

“Someone here?”

Lily shook her head.

“But someone local?”

“UC Berkeley.”

Audrey leaned her head down and pantomimed shock, “Seriously? A college guy?”

“Well, he’s mostly a friend from back in New Mexico.”

“But not just a friend now?”

“I keep thinking about him.”

Audrey punched her in the shoulder in the lightest possible way. “You _have to_ tell me more later. But we’re supposed to bike to Kelly’s class now. Remember?”

Pretty much everyone who was left had already unlocked their bikes and was waiting with Julia. Audrey and Lily grabbed their helmets and tried to be quick. They rode in a pack to the Stanford campus and made their way into a lecture hall.

Kelly opened her presentation with slides and information about murrelets, shifting ecosystems, and how finding a species in an unexpected place might point to environmental changes or gaps in previous knowledge. Then she mentioned the Faber Tract would be used for overflow in case of creek flooding. It already flooded periodically from the bay. Most animals that lived in the marshlands would head to higher ground and weren’t likely to drown during either type of flooding, but they were in greater danger from predators when their usual habitat was underwater.

Kelly showed a slide of a black wren, one of the rare birds in the local marshlands, being eaten by a blue heron during a flood. Lily wondered if she could call a blue heron or black wren to her once she’d identified their vibrations through magic. It would make for an interesting experiment, she thought. Then Kelly said something about a research team, a grant and high school students applying.

“It could count for high school credit as independent study. Write me a letter explaining your interest and relevant experience right away, because the high schools say we’re already past the usual deadlines.”

She then went on to talk about undergraduate research fellowships.

Lily whispered to Audrey beside her, “Is she saying we could do research with her as a high school class?”

“Yeah,” Audrey said. “You should apply.”

“Are you going to?”

“I think so. I have to see if I can fit it into my schedule.”

After class, Audrey went up and asked Kelly a bunch of questions about time commitments, scheduling, and credits. Lily tried to take it all in and couldn’t see any reason not to try, but she knew she was less qualified than most of the Conservation Corps kids.

Nonetheless, Kelly asked her specifically, “Are you going to apply?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think I have any of the experience you want.”

“Biology and chemistry?”

“I’ve had biology, and I’m signed up for chemistry this year. I’m only a sophomore.”

“Write about what you’ve done this summer. I think you have a way with birds.”

Lily didn’t know what to say to that.

 

That evening she went out to see her murrelets. One came to her calmly; the other she could barely sense, far away down the bay. She checked with both closed and opened eyes to make sure she hadn’t attracted any other animals or humans. She wondered if learning not to pull all the animals at once could help her learn not to pull on her dad or Xavier. At least she wasn’t attracting random bystanders, not that many passed by on the weekdays. Those who biked along the levee trail never seemed to notice her, and those walking seemed happy to look the other way.

She tried to imagine a time when she’d want to have magical power over a person, and she couldn’t think of any. Her connection to nature and the animals felt more comfortable by the day, but she didn’t think she’d want to be comfortable with magic that affected people. Even with animals, there was the worry that she might hurt them without meaning to. What if she drew a bird out from cover and a predator attacked? What if she lost control and did something that upset a whole ecosystem?

She gently loosened her connection to the murrelet and then erased it all together. The bird didn’t seem to mind, as long as she cut off slowly. It wove back through the cord grass as if she wasn’t even there.

Lily sat on the dirt, feeling the warmth of the lowering sun on her back and the warmth of the ground creeping through her fingers and body. Almost, she felt where the connections to animals could be, but stood empty. She was like a potato head doll with feet and eyes and everything removed, and it didn’t feel bad, because she knew she could reconnect any bits she wanted.

As an experiment, she tested her connection to the salt marsh harvest mouse, only enough to see where he was. He was far away and sleeping. How did she know he was sleeping? Lily wasn’t sure. There was something about the pull, an almost rhythm that felt like her own experience of sleep. She let the connection fade gently away.

Gradually, she drew together her sense of the great egret. She tried to know where the bird was without affecting it or pulling it her way. The egret was to her left, way out in the wetter area of the marsh. Lily tried to find connections to snowy egrets, but she couldn’t remember clearly enough. Or maybe she could only recreate the connection if that individual animal was around. She tried to call her great egret and to fuzz the pull a bit, to see if she could call any other great egrets in the area.

After a few minutes her great egret was picking its way along a watery channel toward her, but no other egrets were enticed. She tried to imagine a connection like the one she felt but pulling from other directions. Nothing bit. Eventually, she closed her eyes and opened her mind to every glowing dot of life around her. She let them pull on her and be pulled toward her. There were dozens, maybe hundreds. Lily examined each connection, trying to find one similar to her egret. But the ones that felt most similar were her murrelets, and she thought the similarity must be their familiarity to her. She thought toward her mouse. It felt similar but also very different. There was a steady core to the connection that she thought might have something to do with familiarity, but around that the mouse seemed fast and flowing, even in its sleep. The murrelets and the egret seemed to vibrate more. She sifted through other connections for the strongest pull that seemed fast and flowing. She focused on that connection and pulled it toward her, letting her other connections ease. As it came close on her right, she saw it was a large gray rat, almost the size of a small cat. That shouldn’t be here, she thought, and in her moment of startle the connection snapped and the rat quickly ran away. If she’d kept control, perhaps she could have forced it away from the marshlands. It wasn’t clear to Lily if that would be justified, because the rat didn’t belong, or if it would be wrong to use her magic that way.

When she’d come out to the Faber Tract, Lily had planned to try locating a blue heron or a black wren, but she felt strangely tired. It was as if all her points of connection were a little sore and didn’t want to be pulled at for a while. Briefly, she wondered if she could stop her effect on her dad or Xavier by wearing out that part, but if she had to use the ability to wear it out, the treatment might be worse than the cure.

Dusting her hands, Lily pulled herself up and headed home to write her application for Kelly’s research team.

 

Friday she came home to email from Xavier:

Last minute, sorry, but want to see a circus show?

There’s a professional youth troupe performing in Oakland tonight at seven at a place called Circus Arts. Tickets are $10 at the door. I could meet you there if your family wants to drive out or at the BART station if you’re coming alone.

Xavier

Lily wanted to go, but she didn’t want to risk being outside with Xavier, even to walk from a BART station to wherever Circus Arts was. She forwarded the email to both her parents and her sister. Amazingly enough, everyone agreed.

At 6:30 she was in the backseat with Rose. She couldn’t help smiling whenever she thought about seeing Xavier or being in a circus space again. But being in the car reminded her of the day she’d discovered her weird ability with her father. She’d been annoyed at Rose and not wanted to join her in the back seat. Walking to the car, her father had offered to sit in back. He’d also offered to take them out to ice cream. While her dad was a generally above average parent, the whole thing had been too weird for her not to notice. She’d just discovered her ability to see glowing people and that her dad glowed. It hadn’t taken much to convince her she’d done something to affect him.

Since that day, she’d worried a bit about accidentally using magic on her dad. He’d tried to help her experiment in Hawaii, but she’d never been able to do anything to him on purpose. He said he’d worked something out with her mom to safeguard them both and told Lily not to worry too much. But how much was too much with something freaky like that?

She didn’t think she’d accidentally influenced him since then, making a point of asking her mom if she wanted anything when outdoors. But what could she do about Xavier? In a way, it would be easy not to see him. They hadn’t been friends all that long or been all that close.

What it came down to was, she didn’t want to give him up. If she was honest with herself, she was crushing on him in a pretty major way now. She thought of him several times a day. Sometimes it was simply that she wanted to tell him whatever she figured out about her magic, but a lot of it wasn’t like that. He’d said he liked her. She wanted him to say it again. She wanted him to be with her liking her. She wanted him to touch her. How could she ever be around him outside with all those wants?

Tonight would be okay as long as they stayed inside the circus school where the show was. In a way, knowing she had to be careful made the whole thing more mysterious and exciting. Wondering if Xavier felt the same way, if he’d thought of her as much as she’d thought of him, gave her some kind of a buzz.

Not far off the freeway, they pulled in front of a warehouse painted red and white in broad vertical stripes. Her dad began to circle the block, looking for parking. It wasn’t the greatest neighborhood. A couple of buildings had sheets for curtains or boarded up windows, but the houses were mostly old Victorians, and several had been fixed up with fresh paint and colorful trim. The area had more character than the neighborhood surrounding her previous circus school in Seattle. That too had been in a converted warehouse, but it had been surrounded by more warehouses, all the same and fairly businesslike.

When they finally walked into Circus Arts, Lily felt welcomed by the gym smell and a flood of bright colors. Red curtains stretched thirty feet to the ceiling in places. The first inside wall was deep purple with a mural of giant-sized contortionists painted in as silhouettes. The carpet change from green to blue-gray as they bought tickets and entered the main space.

Xavier waved them over to where he’d saved seats. He hugged Lily, sending tingles through her skin. Then he hugged her mom and dad while asking about the drive. Rose hung back a bit surveying the room with a droopy bored ease that Lily saw as totally fake and rehearsed. Lily spared one moment to wonder how much her sister missed their old circus troupe or how much she missed Kei, who she'd been involved with off and on in Hawaii. Then she was caught up in Xavier’s discussion with her father about food options and campus life in Berkeley.

When a small woman in tight red pants asked everyone to sit before the show began, Lily ended up between Xavier and her dad. She watched the opening act where everyone performed at once across an inconsistently lit stage. Each performer wore some combination of gold and silver, varying from a metallic tissue lamé tutu on the trampoline to ultra-tall satin pants for stilts to the usual unitards and leotards on trapeze and other apparatuses.

Lily couldn’t help watching the trapeze and thinking to herself, “I could do that, and I could to that, and with a few months and some good choreography, I think I could even do that.”

Then Xavier whispered in her ear, “Bet you could do all that.”

Lily smiled and shrugged. She glanced at her dad on the other side. She liked having Xavier whisper in her ear, but she didn’t think he’d ever seen her do trapeze. Suddenly, she remembered how Xavier used to sit on his roof with binoculars and watch for strange goings on in the desert. Could he have seen her backyard as well? Had he seen her on the backyard rig? Maybe he’d seen her when she practiced on the bridge railing over a rocky dry creek bed. The thought could have been creepy, but now it made her feel closer to Xavier and more flattered by his comment.

Lily sat back and enjoyed being in a town with a real circus school, a full practice space, and a guy who knew enough to tell her about it.

After the youth company opened the show, there were several individual performances by adults. Lily thought she could pretty easily pick out which were coaches and which were adult students. Then they looped back for the youth performance group to perform individually. Each had a totally different style and costume. There were definitely bits in these routines that Lily couldn’t do yet, drops on silks and strength moves on trapeze. She felt most similar to a girl in blue and green who performed on the hoop to a song about the ocean. The performer was African American and probably three years younger than Lily, but she shared the length of limbs that had determined much of Lily’s style on all aerial apparatuses.

Lily was now five foot nine and hadn’t been on a circus hoop for over a year, but she wanted to dive right in and try that routine. Another pair did a double trapeze routine to something sounding suspiciously like her sister’s anime music, and Lily imagined Rose up there with one of them. By the end, Lily was so eager to move that she wasn’t willing to sit a moment extra. She stood to clap when there was an ovation and was sorry to sit down when people wanted to talk and give flowers. Then the owner of the school announced that flying trapeze and trampoline would be open for audience members to try for free until 10:30.

“Let’s fly!” Lily said. She grabbed Xavier’s hand, “You too.”

“I’ll try.”

In the end, their whole group stood chatting in line. Lily’s mom and dad had both tried flying trapeze in Seattle but didn’t want to tonight in the evening out clothes they’d worn. Xavier was in jeans, but said he’d try anyway. Lily and Rose had both thought to wear leggings, not because they’d expected to participate but because they’d dressed in circus style. Rose was wearing a Cirque du Soleil shirt and red leggings. Lily had chosen black leggings and a tank top with an Indonesian blue and purple batik blouse over. She tied the blouse snug around her midriff while her parents signed a waiver form. Xavier, of course, was old enough to sign his own.

There wasn’t anyone catching, and Lily hadn’t trained that much on flying trapeze. Still, many moves could transfer from static trapeze. She climbed the ladder with all the grace she’d learned in Seattle. The coach at the top wasn’t surprised when she named her move. She chose a variation on Bird’s Nest and put the safety lines on herself. The coach checked then called out “Listo” and “Hep”.

It felt good to jump, arch up, then let loose and fly.

It felt really good.

She exited the net and returned the safety lines in the most basic way, as they’d been asked to do. Then she watched her sister do a Straddle Whip that would have been even cooler if they had someone catching on the other trapeze.

Xavier did the most basic Knee Hang, but Lily couldn’t help watching. He was a little awkward pulling his knees up but managed even in jeans. When he swung, the coach cued him for the release, and he landed smoothly in the net. As he rolled down and removed his safety lines, Lily’s whole family went to congratulate him.

He said, “Trampoline?”

Lily had never been that impressed with trampoline, but she couldn’t help staring when Xavier took his turn. He’d removed his shirt, saying he was already too hot from the trapeze, and he looked good. He’d never been a real muscle guy, but he had rhythm. When he bounced, all his muscles worked smoothly together. His arms circled back, and it was nice to watch.

Then Lily caught Rose watching, and Rose had clearly noticed Lily watching. There was a mutual raising of eyebrows, but they’d gone beyond clever pestering somehow.

After Xavier, Rose took the next turn. Lily told Xavier he bounced well, but she was sure he heard more than she said. It made her blush.

Rose was better at trampoline than Lily. She had a bouncier, more high energy style in general. Lily didn’t stand out going after her, but she enjoyed her turn anyway. Flying trapeze and trampoline weren’t the sort of things you could pack town to town easily. They both brought back memories of Seattle, where she’d been secure in her place as a circus girl, which was almost as good as being a surfer girl, at least within her crowd.

She wandered by a wall with fliers and pulled out a class schedule. There were “beginning,” “advanced,” and “mixed” classes for trapeze, silks, aerial, trampoline, juggling, and so on. The performance troupe practices were three days a week, and Lily wondered if she could get here by bus and BART well enough. She wondered if she wanted to start over again with a new group.

It felt familiar to be in a circus warehouse with all the equipment and mats. Even set up with folding chairs as it was tonight, the building radiated safety and welcome to her.

Then Xavier came up beside her. “So?”

“I’m glad you told us about this.”

“Me, too.” He leaned close enough that their shoulders touched and read the class list in her hands. “Mixed means anyone can take it?”

She nodded. “Are you thinking we could take something together?”

“Could do. Or you could try out for their team. I’m sure they’d take you.”

“How do you know?”

He rolled his eyes like it should be obvious, but he didn’t directly mention all the time he’d spent on his old roof with binoculars. Lily thought she should be annoyed to find out he’d spied on her, but she was strangely pleased. She’d known he watched Jen. He’d called Lily once when he needed assistance before rushing out into the desert to deliver a warning. She’d sat on his roof and spied on Jen with him. It was almost reassuring to know he’d spared some time to watch her too. Or maybe it seemed nice right now because he looked so good with his shirt off.

Rose came running up, “Hey, they have a bake sale for their team and mom’s buying.”

They ended the evening with rice crispy treats and brownies. Lily made a point of saying goodbye to Xavier inside.

           

Monday, Lily was packing school supplies in a new backpack and trying to set out some clothes. For some reason school started on a Tuesday here. That left all of Monday to plan and reconsider. Lily was about to give up and make a second trip to see her murrelets when Rose yelled up from the kitchen, “Phone for you!”

Lily didn’t like phones. For a teenager, she had an almost unhealthy aversion to them, and she couldn’t imagine who would be calling at her new home number.

Downstairs she answered, “Hello?”

“Hey, this is Kelly. I wanted to let you know that you’re accepted for the Wetlands Conservation Study Team.”

“Great! Thanks!” Lily couldn’t believe it. She’d been so sure it wouldn’t work out, she’d totally pushed it from her mind.

“I can fax the paperwork to your high school, but the counselors are recommending you stop by with a parent today. They say they’ll be swamped tomorrow, and you either need to drop something else or have a parent agree that you can handle the load.”

“Oh,” Lily didn’t know what to say. “Both my parents are at work.”

“Well, it’s up to you. I should go ahead and fax it though, right? You still want to do this.”

“Definitely.”

“We’re setting up for 4-6 Wednesdays and Fridays officially. Come by my office at Stanford at four this Wednesday, and we’ll talk about how to count hours for credit. We may need to shift things around for fieldwork.”

“Sure,” Lily said.

“Don’t worry. We’ll make it work.”

“Thanks.”

“See you Wednesday then.” And after the briefest pause, “Bye.”

“Bye,” Lily ended. She hung up feeling sweaty where the phone had touched her face and tense through her shoulders and back. “I hate phones.”

“Yeah,” Rose said. “It’s challenging when you limit yourself to ‘thanks,’ ‘great,’ and ‘sure.’”

Lily shrugged, “I’ll stick with circus. They don’t make me talk.” But that made her realize, if she was doing the Wetlands Team she probably didn’t have time for a circus troupe. “Rose, were you planning to try out for the Circus Arts troupe?”

“No. I’m going out for basketball.”

Lily’s cell phone buzzed. She had a text from Audrey:

            Meet at Paly? Set up Ind Study?

Lily texted back:

                        My parents are both at work

Audrey sent:

            Set up forms- Meet me?

Lily sent:

                        Okay. Leaving now.

She grabbed the packet with enrollment forms that she’d planned to carry the first day of school and then realized she should tell her parents. She copied them both on a quick email:

I got onto the Wetlands Team. I’m going by Paly to find out about fixing my schedule, and I may need a parent signature at some point.

Getting to campus was easy. She followed a major road that went right by her house. When they’d first moved, she’d gone with her family to explore the layout of the school. It could have passed for a junior college in many places. However, her paperwork had been handled at the nearby district office. She didn’t immediately remember where the high school main office might be. She pulled out her campus map. One annoying thing about this school was that she wouldn’t get her schedule until the first day. She’d have to map and track her way to each class.

The map got her to the office. She looked inside but didn’t see Audrey. No one was at the front desk, and Lily wasn’t sure what she’d ask anyway. Suddenly she felt very small, not because the school was huge, but because she was uninformed. How could she revise a schedule she didn’t have yet based on a fax she didn’t even have a copy of? She went back outside and texted Audrey:

                        On campus. Where should I meet you?

Audrey didn’t reply immediately, so Lily started wandering among the buildings. The offices and the school theatre next door were big sand-colored buildings, with arched doorways and red roofs. They looked a little like an old Spanish mission. Behind them was a large open area labeled “QUAD” on Lily’s map. She wasn’t sure why it was in all caps, but it certainly was large and empty. Tomorrow there would be thousands of students rushing through.

Kneeling down as if she needed to tie her shoe, Lily rested her hand on a patch of grass. She let her fingers sink down and test for magic but found nothing: no warmth, no invisible strings, no glows behind closed eyelids. Standing up, Lily told herself she’d be relieved not to worry about that at school, but part of her felt even more isolated.

Across the “QUAD” she passed by a door marked “Library” and into a breezeway between buildings. It was kind of funny, the buildings were much like any other school, blocks of concrete with rows of doors and windows, but the roofs were made of old, curved tiles. It gave a quaint historic twist to the lockers lining the walls.

Finally Audrey wrote back:

            Parking. Meet you at the office.

Before Lily even reached the office, her mom texted:

Congratulations! I haven’t taken lunch yet. Should I meet you at the school office now?

Lily waited until Audrey walked up.

“Hi Lily. This is my mom, Stephanie Dorning.”

The formality made Lily stand up straighter without thinking about it.

“Good to meet you.” Audrey’s mom reached out to shake Lily’s hand. “It’s great to meet one of Audrey’s friends from that summer group. And now you two will be working together with a university research team. I’m very excited for you!”

Lily nodded. Stephanie looked nothing like Audrey. She had porcelain pale skin and blond hair tucked up in an intentionally messy bun. She wore tailored cotton pants with a red and white floral pattern like a cheap Hawaiian shirt, but Lily guessed it was fashion. Her blouse looked like silk and her necklace winked with shining red stones.

Lily asked, “Should I tell my mom to meet us here? She said that she could.”

Stephanie went to a counter where an admin was sorting papers and had a quick, quiet conversation with her. When she came back she said, “Tell your mom to come right out. We’ll have the next two appointments to see the guidance counselor.”

Lily texted her mom and then sat down next to Audrey.

“What are you taking, anyway?” Audrey asked.

“I thought we didn’t find out until tomorrow?” Lily clutched her packet of forms worried for a moment that she’d missed something.

Audrey rolled her eyes, “No, I mean what did you ask for?”

Lily pulled out the form that listed: Algebra II, Chemistry I, World History, English II, Spanish II and Art Spectrum. “This?” she asked.

Audrey wrinkled her nose and pulled the paper out of Lily’s hands. “They put you in all the stupid classes, and only six periods. Did you get bad grades last year?”

“I had a few B’s, mostly because I switched schools partway through first semester. But second semester I had all A’s or A-’s. I thought these were the regular sophomore classes.”

“Oh, Lily, it’s a good thing you ended up in here today.”

With a distressed sort of gratitude, Lily braced herself to learn whatever she should have already known.

Audrey plucked the class list right out of Lily’s hands as she said, “There are at least two lanes in all the core subjects, and they’ve put you in the bottom lanes for everything. I can tell you’re smarter than that, and anyway, it’s really hard to shift up if a class is too slow. You can always drop down if you need to. I think Algebra II is high enough to get you into Chem 1A. You definitely want to change that. I mean, there’s hardly any point in doing independent study if you aren’t going to have upper lane science classes on your transcript. You know, the real science contenders transfer in classes from local colleges or summer programs.”

Lily nodded slowly, not quite comfortable with how Audrey was telling her, but frightened for what had almost happened and relieved at finding out in time. The two were all mixed up together, and all Lily could do was nod.

Then the admin announced, “Audrey, the counselor will see you now.”

Audrey returned the class list without a backward glance. Her mother followed behind her, shoulders back and chin up, in a way that reminded Lily of a mother duck.

They were still in the counselor’s office when Lily’s mom showed up.

“Mom, I’m glad you came,” Lily lowered her voice as her mom sat down beside her. “Audrey says they put me in all the bottom level courses and that it’s hard to switch up after school starts.”

They huddled over Lily’s paperwork and a copy of the course catalog until Audrey and her mom emerged.

Lily stood up and introduced her mom to the Dornings.

Audrey said “Hi” and couldn’t have squeezed another word in if she’d wanted to.

“I am excited to meet you!” Stephanie said, smiling like a toothpaste ad. “We worked it all out with the counselor for this to count as a regular five unit semester course. Now we’re going over to see Judith, the head of the science department. We can have her sign these forms for both girls and they’ll be all set for their independent studies class.”

“That’s wonderful,” Lily’s mom said, and she sounded at once like and unlike herself. In a moment, Lily placed it. This was how her mom sounded when she spoke on the phone to certain people, usually people from work. “I’m glad our daughters are going to be together, and we’d love to have you over for dinner once we’re fully moved in.”

Both moms smiled at each other as Lily and her mom headed into the guidance counselor’s office.

Inside, another bright white smile awaited them. Lily wondered if she could be excluded from Palo Alto for not smiling widely or whitely enough.

“Audrey, Mrs. Thompson, it's good to meet you. I’m Mrs. Ashdon. Please have a seat.”

There were pleasantries and assurances that the independent study paperwork was all in order. Then Lily’s mom asked, “While we’re here, could you look over this list with us? Lily thinks she might need to be assigned to more challenging classes.”

There was a noticeable hesitation before Mrs. Ashdon accepted the paper listing Lily’s class requests. “Which subjects concern you, Lily?”

Both her mother and Mrs. Ashdon looked at her, and Lily knew she had to speak for herself. She swallowed and said, “Well, in general, I try to be a pretty good student. I thought maybe I could try being in the higher lane of classes, and then I could switch down if I needed to.”

Mrs. Ashdon’s teeth were still whitely exposed, but her mouth no longer curved up in a smile. “Lily, dear, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but there’s nothing wrong with these classes. You’re signed up for the normal sophomore schedule, and about half the students here take exactly these courses. In another school district, an advanced or honors class might cover the same material we cover in our standard lane here. If there’s a particular subject you excel at, I’ll see what I can do, but honestly, it’s the day before school starts. Most of our classes are already set.”

Lily felt the heat rise to her face.

Her mother rescued her saying, “How do you decide on placements for new students?”

Mrs. Ashdon clicked on her computer screen and said, “We look at the child’s previous test scores and grades. Since you came from out of state, the tests are different. But her GPA was 3.84 at a much less competitive school in basic grade level classes. She may find the transition challenging as it is.”

Lily’s mom looked at Lily and shrugged, “What do you think?”

The open calm in her mother’s face grounded Lily. She knew her mom could fight any bureaucracy to get her into all advanced classes if that was what Lily wanted. She was also fairly sure her mom wouldn’t think less of her if she settled for what she had. “Could I move up in Chemistry, and maybe English?” Lily asked.

Her mom’s gaze shifted back to the counselor as if the matter was settled.

Mrs. Ashdon looked at Lily with big eyes and a tiny smile. “I don’t think you realize what you’re putting yourself in for. If you move up in both science and English, that could be an extra ten hours a week of homework, and you’re already adding an extra class with the,” she looked down at a paper on her desk, “Wetlands Conservation Study Team.”

Lily’s mom looked at her again, and Lily nodded. Her mom said, “It’s what she wants to do. Isn’t high school about challenging yourself and seeing what you’re capable of? If it’s a mistake, she’ll learn from that as well.”

“I’m sure you understand, it’s very hard for the school if several students request to change lanes partway through the semester. We try to plan for needed courses with the correct student teacher ratio at the beginning of the year.”

Lily’s mom smiled, “And we will be very sorry if we inconvenience you later, but none of us knows how Lily will fit into the system here. Perhaps by changing this now we are avoiding the need to change anything mid-semester. We do greatly appreciate your time and assistance.”

Mrs. Ashdon was quiet after that. She wasn’t smiling, but Lily felt her side had won as Mrs. Ashdon printed out papers and Lily’s mom signed them with an almost regal authority. Still, something in Lily trembled at how much a person’s future might be determined by having a well-meaning friend and a supportive mom, or just by having people meet up in the office the day before school opened.

 

 

 

 

 

4

Beginnings

The first day of school wasn’t bad; the second was terrifying. Lily’s English class wanted a five paragraph theme, chemistry wanted a lab write up, Spanish planned a vocabulary quiz, and math assigned two pages. At four o’clock she reported to Kelly’s office at Stanford. Audrey was with her, having biked over together.

“Hey, come in!” Kelly jumped up from her desk. “I hope this won’t be boring, but I’ve got all sorts of project information to share with you today. First, I have an official Stanford binder for each of you to keep your readings and notes in.” She handed them each a dark red binder with the Stanford logo in white. Your first reading will be the _Wetlands Study Proposal_ that we submitted to get our grant.” She handed each of them a stapled set of papers, about twenty pages printed front and back. “I’m hoping that by Friday you can read through, mark anything you don’t understand, and come back with a list of two or three parts you think you’d most like to work on. Got that?”

Audrey nodded, and Lily glanced at the report. It contained such inspiring subtitles as “Flood Risk Assessment”, “Habitat Mapping” and “Performance Criteria.”

“Okay, Lily?”

“I’ll try.”

“It’s okay if you don’t understand every word. Write down your questions and try to get a hold on the main ideas, okay?”

Lily nodded, and suddenly Kelly was at the office door and ushering them out. “Come on. I want you to meet the rest of the team.”

She took them downstairs to a tiny office with two desks set up. Kelly gave a quick knock on the open door, “Hey, Max,” a man with a round face and hair shaved very short stood up. “This is Lily and this is Audrey. They’re the high school students joining our team.”

“Hi,” he raised his hand in a quick wave. “I’m Max Chan. I’m a civil engineering postdoc specializing in water resources.”

“Can you show them your flood simulator?”

“Sure.” Max did something with his mouse, clicking through windows very fast, until he had a screen that showed drawings of several bridges laid out like a quilt with sliding scales between them for the stitching. He clicked sliders on the screen. “This shows one inch of rainfall in an hour after a typical winter, as of February first.” Each bridge now showed a blue line under it for water level and a measurement in feet on the bar to its right. None of the bridges were close to flooding yet. Lily was happy to understand that much.

Max moved the mouse. “We can slide this up and see Chaucer is the first bridge to flood from high rainfall.”

Lily nodded. She remembered Chaucer Bridge from their Conservation Corps discussion.

“Now, if we set this toggle to a very high tide…” he clicked again. A square marked “101 Freeway” overflowed with blue. “As we receive data for the levee adjustments downstream from the freeway, I’ll build that into the model.”

“Could you model different possibilities?” Audrey asked.

“Different possibilities for the levee adjustments?”

“Yeah,” Audrey nodded, “Or whatever else they propose.”

“I can. It’s a matter of how to use the time. I also have a model of creek flow in San Francisquito Creek.” He clicked to a simplified map of the creek with numbers above different sections. “The red numbers are flow volume. The black are current speed.” He had slider bars to set the current rainfall, previous conditions, and bay level. As he changed the sliders, little arrows moved down the creek at different speeds and its blue area bulged or contracted as the water flowed to the bay. He pushed the sliders higher and said, “Uh oh, that’s a flood.” Blue spilled out of the creek at four points. The red numbers decreased, but light blue spread across the rest of the screen.

“Does it show how long it stays flooded?” Lily asked.

“That depends on other factors like the storm drains, how saturated the ground is, whether it’s high tide.”

“But for the wetlands,” Lily pointed at the mouth of the creek right by the bay, “That would mostly depend on tides, right?”

Max looked at Kelly, “Are we supposed to model drainage as part of this project?”

“We’ll map the channels as part of the habitat mapping.” She tapped her pencil on her chin. “It would be great if we could relate the flood assessment to that.”

Max shrugged his shoulders forward, almost like a wrestler hunched in front of his opponent, except that he was facing off against a computer. “Well, maybe.”

They left Max’s office and walked to another building where Kelly introduced them to Dr. Martin, a biochemist. He looked about a hundred years old, with thin white hair and pale spotted skin on his face and neck. He shook their hands.

“You girls found the murrelets, right? I saw the pictures.” He looked at Lily as if maybe he recognized her from the shot of her back in some photos. “I look forward to working with you.”

Then Kelly took them to have their pictures taken for ID badges. “You probably won’t need them, but if someone bugs you at the copy machine or out in the wetlands, it makes you look official.”

Finally, as they walked back toward Kelly’s building she asked, “I think we’ll do fieldwork Friday. Do you want to come here first and get a ride or meet us out at the Faber Tract?”

“I’d rather bike there,” Lily said. “It’s close to my house.”

“Me too,” said Audrey. “I’ll bike with her.”

“Excellent. Don’t forget your binders and any questions or suggestions.”

With that, Lily went home and did homework almost non-stop until midnight. It was the first day since she’d found the murrelets that she didn’t go to check on them.

 

Thursday’s homework was almost as bad and then Lily had to pick her way through the _Wetlands Study Proposal_ that Kelly had given her. It was slow going. Lily knew most of the individual words, but she wasn’t always sure what they meant together.

Her mom came to check on her at eleven. “Are you almost done?”

“Do you have any idea what ‘guidelines in the USFWS (1991) Predator Management Plan and final EA’ means?”

Her mom came in to lean against the desk. She was already in her silk pajamas and bathrobe, but she hadn’t taken her hair down or washed off her make up. Her eyebrows wrinkled together in the center. “I suspect the first acronym stands for US Fish and Wildlife Service, but I have no idea what they’re using ‘EA” for. Are they killing some kind of predator species?”

“I think they’re only trapping them,” Lily said as she wrote herself a note about the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Lily,” her mom waited until Lily looked up. “I know this means a lot to you, but if you have this much work the first week of school, do you think you might have taken on too much?”

Lily sighed, “Maybe.” Her greatest regret was that she hadn’t visited the murrelets for a second day in a row. “Can I give it another week and see?”

“Sure,” her mom reached out and rubbed her shoulder. “To bed by 11:30, okay?”

 

The next afternoon at the Faber Tract Lily wanted to rush out and call her murrelets, but she thought that would look more than a little suspicious. She waited with Audrey by the bikes until Kelly and Max showed up a few minutes later.

“Wow, you guys made good time. Maybe we should bike it,” Kelly said. “Here, I brought candy bars. Let’s have a quick team meeting before we start.” Kelly fanned out five different candy bars. Each of them took one and Kelly put the spare back in her messenger bag. They sat facing the bay and the marshlands.

“So, do either of you have questions?”

Audrey began with a question about figuring out the percentage cover of vegetation while Lily pulled out her binder and took a bite of her candy bar. Her copy of the _Wetlands Study Proposal_ was coated with notes and underlining.

After Kelly answered a couple of Audrey’s questions she asked Lily, “What do you want to know?”

Lily glanced at all she’d marked and said, “I’m not sure where to begin.”

“Can I look?” Kelly asked.

Lily passed over her binder and Kelly began a sort of impromptu lecture following what Lily had written in her margins. Audrey pulled out her copy and started following along page by page adding notes in her margins. It looked like Audrey’s copy had previously had a few colors of highlighting, but no written in notes.

Lily tried to pay attention to every word Kelly said, because she didn’t have her paper to write answers on. Maybe she was fooling herself, but it all seemed to make sense when Kelly talked.

Halfway through, Max dug out a pad of graph paper and wrote himself a note.

“Did you want to add anything, Max?” Kelly asked.

“No, I don’t want to interrupt. Go on.”

Kelly ended up reviewing something from almost every page of the report, and when she handed it back to Lily she said, “That’s useful. I should have you write questions on my lecture notes that I can fill in before I give lectures.”

“Only if you’re lecturing clueless high school students.”

Kelly laughed. “You’d be surprised. Often college students from other majors taking my class have exactly those sorts of questions. That was good. Now, are there certain areas either of you want to focus on?”

Audrey said, “I think I’d like to do vegetation surveys and maybe the impact of public use and the levee changes.”

Kelly nodded and looked to Lily.

“Well, there isn’t anything here about the murrelets.”

“We applied for the grant before you found them.”

“Would they fall under the habitat mapping? They’re not predators or an invasive species, right?”

“We don’t want to get rid of them, if that’s what you mean. And I’d be happy to have you study them, but you’ll need a broader focus. We don’t even know if they’re still here, and we certainly can’t assume they’re staying. They’ll probably go north to breed if nothing else.”

“What’s involved in habitat mapping?”

“Well, as I told Audrey, we’ll be using a belt transect method to estimate vegetation cover. We’ll also monitor animals and animal signs found within the belt areas. Then we’ll use those findings along with GIS to map changes over time.”

Lily didn't fully understand what she'd read about the belt transect method, but she thought it was another way of specifying study areas beyond quadrats. “Are you saying we only note that there are murrelets here if there are signs of them in our location while we’re counting?”

Kelly laughed. “You love those murrelets, don’t you? I’ll tell you what, even if they don’t end up in the mapping, we’ll find someplace to mention them in our report. If you see them again, why don’t you write down the day, time, and what they’re doing? Take picture if you can. Now, what else would you like to work on?”

“I guess the mapping or the flood stuff. I’d kind of like to work outside if possible.”

“Good! We’ll set up a schedule of study.”

“I’m going to take some measurements of the existing levee,” Max said, as he stood up and dusted himself off.

Audrey and Lily followed Kelly out, and Lily used her cell phone to take pictures of plants. Most of them came out blurry or overexposed, but it was lots of fun. She was careful not to touch the ground or accidentally call any animals. Still, several small birds foraged near them for a while, and a couple of ducks flew in and seemed to beg for handouts. Lily could feel a slight pull from each of them, no matter what she was doing.

“There’s a pond where people feed the ducks over there,” Kelly pointed across the golf course, and Lily could feel a vague pull from many birds in that direction. “They’re not supposed to.”

At six Lily biked home and then asked her parents if she could go back out to watch for murrelets.

“Do you have time for that?” her mom asked.

“It’s Friday night,” Lily said. “I don’t have anything due until Monday.”

With a sigh and a smile her mom said, “Be back by seven-thirty?”

“Sure,” Lily was out the door. She brought a small notebook and her cell phone with her.

When the murrelets came out of the cord grass, happiness seemed to flow through the connection to Lily. She assumed it was her own happiness at finding the birds still alive and willing to come to her, but she wondered if they felt it. She snapped a quick picture and noted the date and time in her journal.

After taking a few more photos as the murrelets did basically nothing, Lily eased off the connections and photographed the birds retreat into the tall grasses. Then she hurried home for dinner, promising herself she’d come back both days of the weekend.

 

After dinner she found email from Xavier:

How’s your first week of school? Mine’s not bad. I’d have time for a circus class this weekend if you want to come out. Or I’d be happy to visit there. Let me know.

X

She wrote back:

Unfair!!! I have a ton of work. This place is insane. No chance I’m getting out there for circus, probably ever. You can visit if you want, but I mostly need to do lots of homework. Sorry.

L

           

As it worked out, Xavier came for brunch on Sunday.

“Waffles!” was the rallying cry as Lily’s dad summoned everyone from the living room to the dining table. “And fresh orange juice,” he added.

“Thanks, Mr. Thompson,” Xavier said.

“Since when am I Mr. Thompson? Didn’t you call me Justin back in New Mexico? Join the family. Eat the waffles.”

They all laughed, but Lily felt there was still some tension from their discussion of magic the previous weekend. Part of her wished they could say it all openly around the table. But Lily hadn’t wanted to tell Rose about the time she’d accidentally magicked her dad, and he’d agreed to let her decide when, though Rose had seen enough in Hawaii to possibly guess. Like all little sisters, she tended to know whatever Lily didn’t want her to, but with this it was a bit more complicated.

Xavier’s hand brushed Lily’s as they both reached for fruit salad, and Lily felt a pleasant tingle as she pulled her hand away. For a moment she worried it was magic, but then she relaxed because they were safe inside. She wondered if Xavier felt half the interest in her that she’d recently found for him. When she looked up he was watching her, and it made Lily feel warm inside almost the way her magic did.

After brunch, Xavier insisted that he would do the dishes. Lily offered to help and after everything was brought to the counter, her family had the good grace to leave them alone.

“How are the murrelets?” Xavier asked.

“Still there,” Lily said. “I’ve got an independent study class set up where I’m going to help survey their habitat.”

Xavier stopped with a dish in hand to turn his head and look at her. “How did you set that up?”

The explanation took until they were almost out of dishes. Then Xavier asked, “Wouldn’t the way animals come to you throw off the counting?”

“I’ve gotten a lot better at it. I can totally not call them or only call specific animals I know.”

“All that with only two weeks of practice?”

“Yeah,” Lily hadn’t appreciated that before. “Yeah, I guess that is kind of neat.”

“Maybe if you practiced on the human part, it wouldn’t be a problem anymore either.”

She sighed and let her hands rest in the remaining warm water. “I wish. I tried to practice with my dad and with my friend Makana in Hawaii. It didn’t go well with Makana. I barely improved at all. She eventually got a charm made to block me. It also seemed to stop if I touched her, and speaking aloud maybe helped. It almost never happens with my dad, so that doesn’t work well for practice.”

“What do you mean ‘she got a charm made to block you’?”

Lily blushed. “Trying to help me was hard on our friendship. In the end, they found someone local who could put bits of our magic into charms so we couldn’t affect each other. But we had to have something from each of our magics; so even if we knew someone like that here, it couldn’t help you or my dad until we know what you can do.”

She looked over at him then, and he met her eyes. There wasn’t any expression she could identify on his face, except a new sort openness. In that moment, she was solidly glad to have him as a friend. There were other feelings too, but that was something she could keep separate and would, if it was a choice between that and their friendship.

“Does your magic stop if you touch me?”

He asked in an innocent, matter of fact voice, but it threw Lily’s insides up against her ribcage. The thought of touching him seemed enough to break down the separation she’d thought she could maintain. Still, she could hide the impulse. Partly because they weren’t outside where her magic might work, she could keep everything under control.

“I don’t know. It’s not the same with you as with Makana. I could feel the connection to her pretty much anytime we were outside. With you, I didn’t even feel it when we had lunch out at the levee. I didn’t notice until I was out by the birds and looked your way. But once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop feeling the connection all the way home, even after you touched my shoulder.”

Xavier was silent for a moment. He seemed to notice his hands were soaking in one side of the sink about the same time she noticed her hands were soaking in the other. With a laugh that was barely more than an exhale he asked, “Should we finish here and go talk someplace else?”

“Sure,” Lily said, glad for the reprieve.

A few minutes later when the time came to talk, she wasn’t so glad. They were back in her room with the door closed, and she was very aware of Xavier in ways that went well beyond friendship.

“I've been thinking about what you said,” Xavier began. “It’s not at all clear that you ever have used magic on me. You say you didn’t feel anything unusual when I put my arm around you at our picnic.”

Lily cringed and covered her face with her hands for a moment.

“What?”

“I don’t know if what I felt was unusual or not, and I’m not sure I’m ready to discuss this.”

Xavier tilted his head in a way that made Lily’s heart beat hard. It reminded her of puppy posters from when she was little, but those didn’t make her heart pound.

“Listen, you were upset then. Is it unusual that you would want to be comforted and that I would want to comfort you?”

Lily didn’t know what to say. What worried her was that they’d almost kissed, and she’d felt sort of like she was causing him to do that. Maybe she hadn’t connected it to magic in the moment, but if she hadn’t stopped him they might have kissed, and she was pretty sure that hadn’t come from his intentions.

“Are you not answering because there’s something more I should know?” He leaned further toward her and her heart thumped some more. “I think I can promise that there’s nothing you can want of me that will bother me more than not knowing what’s going on. There are things I don’t want to have happen, but I’d rather we find a solution than never be outside together.”

Lily still didn’t know what to say. Even if Xavier meant every word he said, she was sure that if she magicked him into doing something he’d regret later, that would affect how he felt about her afterward, either as a friend or if he ever wanted something more. She managed to say, “I want to solve it too. I just don’t see how right now.”

“Let’s approach it scientifically. We can list what we know and what we want to find out. We can find safe ways to experiment.”

“Maybe, but not today, okay? I have a ton of homework.”

Xavier looked like he was struggling. Lily was struggling too, but in a different way, she suspected.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Do you want me to come back next weekend? I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about this by email.”

“Yeah, next weekend would be great.”

He stood, and for a moment Lily thought he would come over and hug her. His weight was balanced toward her and his hands reached out a bit. But he turned away and opened her bedroom door.

Lily stood and followed him out to the living room for a brief round of family conversation and goodbyes. After he left, it was very hard to settle down and do her homework.

 

 

 

 

 

5

Magic

Monday was a disaster. The English teacher assigned another huge essay. Chemistry gave a surprise quiz, and Lily was sure she failed it. The only good thing was when Audrey saw her afterward and asked, “You have someone to eat with?”

Lily was happy to eat with Audrey, even if Audrey sat for long stretches without talking. They ate outside on a bench facing the quad. If the campus seemed pretty empty, it was probably because a lot of students went across the street to buy or supplement their lunch, or to gossip and hang out.

“Do you ever get lunch over there?” Lily asked.

“Once in a while. It’s a rip off, and once school gets going, I’ll mostly want to work through lunch.”

“I think my classes already got going.”

“Who do you have?”

They compared notes and found they had no teachers in common except for chemistry.

“She’s awful,” Audrey said. “Then again, no one who teaches chemistry here is supposed to be very good. Half the kids hire tutors.”

Lily shook her head.

“No, seriously, they did some survey and about half the kids either had a parent who could help or hired a tutor.”

“The school district knows and doesn’t do anything to fix it?” Lily didn’t think it could be true, but Audrey seemed certain. She didn’t bother arguing. It was nice having someone to eat lunch with.

 

Lily left school a little late that day after staying to talk with her history teacher. Staying in the regular lane for history had been a good call. It was her only relaxing class, and the teacher was entertaining and straightforward.

On her ride home she saw someone standing by the railroad tracks. It looked like Pete from the Summer Conservation Corps. She could hear a train coming and the person moved sideways. The barriers were coming down, one to block cars and one to block the sidewalk. The person who might be Pete was moving toward a gap between the barriers, as if he might step in front of the train.

Lily thought “STOP!” She knew in the moment she did so that it was how she’d think magic at a person. But she barely had time to appreciate the realization before remembering that it wouldn’t work on most people. If it was Pete, she knew that he didn’t glow from her experiments over the summer.

She yelled, “STOP!” The train was getting loud, but the person turned. It was Pete. He looked at her like she was the last person he’d expected to see. But he waited patiently while she biked up beside him. By then it was too loud to talk. They waited for the train to pass.

When it was mostly quiet he said, “What was that about?”

She said, “Well, this guy was bugging me, and I thought if he saw I was meeting someone he’d take off.”

Pete nodded. She didn’t think he believed her.

“Do you want me to walk you home?” He asked.

“Uh,” She felt silly, but figured it would give them a chance to talk. “Well, maybe we could walk together as far as our routes overlap?”

He nodded and pushed the button for the crosswalk. They’d already missed one cycle through the lights. Lily got off her bike. Pete turned out to have a bike parked back and to one side of the barrier.

The walk light came on and they crossed the street, each walking their bikes on opposite sides.

Pete looked at her long enough to make Lily slightly uncomfortable. Then he said, “Are you alright now?”

It took a moment for her to realize what he was talking about. “Oh yeah, it was just a creepy guy. What were you waiting for, anyway?”

“I’m pretty sure that railroad crossing will show up in my art, but I don’t know how right now.”

“You decide what you’re drawing before you know why?”

He laughed and straightened his shirt. “When I see something in everyday life, I may have no perspective on it, or several. I’m interested in those things I see many different ways, but if I can capture even one point of view in my art, that’s enough for me.”

Lily nodded. Then she shook her head. It reminded her of how her magic drew her to learn about birds, but she’d ended up focusing on the murrelets without knowing exactly what she intended. “I wonder how many people know where they’re going with something from the start.”

Pete didn’t reply. At the next corner he said, “I usually turn here. Do you want me to walk you farther?”

“No, it’s fine. Thanks.”

“No problem. See you around.”

 

She saw Pete the very next morning. He was standing by the track but didn’t look at all like he was going to jump in front of a train. Lily waved as she biked by.

At lunch Lily ended up with Audrey again. For lack of anything better to talk about she said, “I saw Pete by the tracks both yesterday and this morning. Yesterday I thought he might be about to jump in front of a train, but then we talked on the way home, and he implied it was more of an artistic interest.”

“Pete?” Audrey’s forehead wrinkled up with surprise and then down with concern. “I can’t imagine him jumping in front of a train. He’s talented and charismatic. Don’t you think he’s cute?”

Lily usually hated questions like that, but with Audrey it caught her completely off guard. “Uh, I guess. You like him?”

Audrey practically rolled her eyes, “Well, duh.”

Lily felt clueless for not noticing before and for mentioning her tiny conversation with Pete. She didn’t say anything further to Audrey, but she saw Pete at the tracks a lot that week. They waved to each other most times.

 

That Sunday, Xavier showed up with his hair damp and his face beaming. “Come outside for a minute, I have something to show you.”

“But—”

“I know. This will be fast and right outside your house. Consider it a minor experiment as a favor to a friend.”

Lily’s shoulders sagged, but at least she didn’t desire anything much from him at the moment. “Two minutes max,” she said.

They went out the front door that Xavier had entered and around the house to Lily’s backyard. Inside the gate was a compact black bike with orange taped handlebars. It was even more outdated than Lily’s, but Xavier was smiling like he’d struck gold.

“I got it for twenty bucks, and it’s not stolen. I rode it all the way here from Fremont BART, and it rides well on dirt or pavement.”

“Wow, Fremont’s the other side of the bridge, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, almost twenty miles.”

“Was my dad’s bike that bad? And did you think we’d be biking now?”

“No. It’s not like that. Last week I missed one bus and had to wait a couple hours for the next one to get home. And it’s a nice bike ride.”

Lily shrugged feeling bad that visiting her had wasted up so much of Xavier's time last weekend. “Well, if you’re okay with that, I’m glad you found a bike. Can we go back inside now?”

Xavier shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. Lily knew her reaction had been less than he expected, but she’d tried. She’d come outside. Now she hurried back in trying not to think how cute his hair looked still kind of mussed and half damp.

Back in the living room he said, “That went well, right?”

Lily almost laughed, “Yeah, fine. What ever happened to the motorcycle Jen left you?”

“Wasn't worth fighting the police over. You know how it was back there. In the end, they agreed to let the group home Jen had lived in keep it.”

Lily nodded, remembering the hostile attitudes in that town. Leaving the motorcycle to the group home might have been the best possible outcome.

“How are your birds?”

“They’re good. I’m not getting to see them every day, but that seems okay now.”

Xavier ducked his chin and looked almost pouty. “You know, I probably won’t get to see them again unless I can go there with you.”

“Unfair. Do you want to cause trouble?”

Rose appeared in the hall entryway, “Is Xavier going to be trouble? Can I watch?”

“Hey, Rose.” He smiled at her like a big brother.

She shrugged, “No fireworks today?” Then she continued through to the kitchen.

Lily wondered why neither of her parents was around. It wasn’t that big of a house. They could be staying out of the way to be polite. If so, Lily wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

“You want to come back to my room?” Lily asked.

Xavier sunk his hands into his pockets and headed back, but he didn’t seem exactly pleased.

In Lily’s room, he sat at the desk with his arms crossed.

Lily closed the door and perched on the edge of her bed. After a while, she realized he was waiting for her to start. “You’re annoyed with me?”

“Not so much with you, but with the situation.”

“No one’s forcing you to visit.”

He looked at her and then stared out the window for a while. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

Lily’s stomach flipped. She did want to see Xavier, but things had gotten awkward. “It’s like it’s all my fault, but everything’s out of my control.”

He waited, and finally said, “Meaning?”

The way he tilted his head and looked right at her triggered a little gush of want inside her. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with that. “Magic.”

“Is that all?”

She almost laughed remembering an awkward evening in New Mexico when Xavier had earned the right to ask her questions about Jen. That had been about magic, but Lily had barely known it at the time.

“Why do I want to answer you?”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.” She wanted to reach out and hold his hand but thought that might distract her, and she wanted to sort things out.

“It’s kind of hard to tell.”

“It’s kind of scary to answer.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know what I want, let alone what you want.”

“Isn’t that kind of normal?”

“Except for the magic.”

“Magic is the part that makes it scary?”

She got up and walked across to the window. Her mom and dad were visible through the garage door, digging through moving boxes. “No. I think it's not knowing what I want or how things will work out that’s scary.”

“Funny, I’m less scared with you than with anyone else.” He spoke like it was nothing, without moving from his slouch in the chair, but his jaw was set and his chin was up. His face looked like someone waiting for the sky to fall.

Lily sat across from him and took his hand, “Why?”

He closed his eyes for a moment then said, “Maybe because you want to answer my questions? I have conversations with you that aren’t like conversations with anyone else. Even when we’re not talking, there’s something about you that seems real when the rest of the world isn’t.”

She would have sworn she could feel his pulse through his hand. Could the cliché about “two hearts beating as one” be based on truth? “I don’t know what to say.” He looked at her with big open eyes. It was like the moment in a movie right before the kiss. “That might be the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”

“I hope not,” he gave her hand a squeeze then disengaged to walk over to the window.

She couldn’t help but ask, “Xavier, what happened just now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you pull away?”

He looked at her over his shoulder and his eyebrows wrinkled, “See, no one else I know would ask me that directly.”

She stayed silent, hoping for a real answer. She thought she was acting like him when she waited, and she liked that.

“Are you asking if I wanted to kiss you? If I thought maybe you wanted to kiss me?”

She couldn’t help but nod, even as she felt her face grow warm with blushing.

“Well, obviously I thought about it, and as things go with you, I guess we’d better talk it through.” His hands pushed into his hair harder than she thought necessary. “That’s the thing, I’m glad we can talk about it, but I don’t want to simply let it happen. I know this sounds hokey, but I think I like you too much. I’d like to stay friends with you, even if you move again, even if we hardly ever see each other. I want that more than I want to kiss you.”

His words made Lily want to kiss him even more. “Why can’t we have both?”

“Maybe we could, but I don’t know how yet. The girls I’ve done stuff with weren’t interested in anything lasting. And, Lily, you’re fifteen and I’m eighteen. I’m not sure it’s even legal.”

“To kiss?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Just because I’d want to kiss you doesn’t mean I’d want to do anything more.”

He covered his face with one hand, but it looked like he was closer to laughter than annoyance. “Didn’t you start by saying you didn’t know what you’d want? Isn’t that the sort of thing you’re worried about with your magic? Or am I way off on this?”

Lily felt like her face might stay hot and blushing forever. “What if you kissed me because I wanted it, then later you realized I’d caused it with magic, and get mad?”

“I’m not convinced you could make me do anything with magic that I don’t want to do.”

“Like kiss me?”

His head tilted. It wasn’t as cute this time. “That would probably be a good test, I admit.”

“Why?” Hadn’t she said it was what she was afraid of?

“Because in here I was able to step away, but I still want it enough that I wouldn’t feel bad if it happened.”

Lily felt herself starting to cry. She turned away to hide her face and took a deep breath, but she couldn’t stop the tears.

After a moment, she heard Xavier walk toward her and she felt his hand on her shoulder. She felt the bed sink as he sat down behind her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“What way? That you wouldn’t mind kissing me if you knew it was all my fault? Can’t you understand that I don’t ever want you to kiss me that way? I don’t want to make you do anything that on any level you don’t want to do.”

He waited with his hand on her shoulder. She was torn between wanting to pull away and wanting to turn around and sob on his shoulder. She didn’t move at all.

Finally he said, “Lily, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think people work that way. I’ve never been fully sure before or afterward about kissing someone.”

“How many people have you kissed?”

“I don’t want to lie to you, but I don’t think that should matter.”

Lily turned around and looked at him. He let his hand drop but he didn’t move away. “And you’re afraid to kiss me?”

“Not afraid. It wouldn’t mean the same thing. I’ve never kissed someone I already cared about, and I care about you a lot.”

That made Lily want to kiss him even more. “But that doesn’t make you want to kiss me?”

He moved back to the window. The sun had risen enough to make a glare behind his head, making him hard to look at. “Lily, have you ever kissed anyone before?”

“Sure, well, kind of.”

“Have you ever kissed anyone the way you want it to be if we kiss?”

“No.” She knew it was true, but that was why she wanted it.

“And what if when we kiss it isn’t the way you want it to be? Will we still be able to talk like this?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if we give it some time?”

“You’re saying if we wait, then we’ll know what we want?”

“I hope so.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“You know, the more we talk, the more I think I should have kissed you earlier.”

Lily wiped a hand across her face, “That sounds pretty sad after what you just said.”

“Yeah, I know.” Xavier rubbed the back of his neck but gave Lily a sheepish smile.

There was silence for a while. “I have even less of an idea what I want now.”

“Me, too. And we didn’t even discuss magic yet.”

After a deep breath, Lily said, “I still don’t want to experiment or be outside with you.”

“Ever?”

Lily almost blurted, not until I know I won’t make you kiss me, but instead she said, “Until I think I can control it.”

“You don’t think I can help?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay.” He walked back to the desk chair. “Where do we go from here?”

“Well, I like having you visit and all, but hiding out in my bedroom every weekend could get a little weird. Want to sign up for the mixed level aerial class at Circus Arts? We could meet there, at least sometimes.”

“Sounds good, but I thought you had too much homework.”

“I could work on the train.”

“You won’t laugh at me?”

“Not much.”

Soon they were laughing in the kitchen as they made stuffed apples and tuna melts for everyone.

 

After Xavier left, Lily went out to the Faber Tract. She sat in her usual spot and dug her fingers into the ground on both sides, but she didn’t try to call anything. She let the warmth and energy of the soil run through her. It recharged the parts that felt empty after her tears that morning. But sitting there, doing nothing, she could also feel an energy flowing out of her and sense the possibility for connection. Without trying to call any animals, without even trying to sense their numbers or directions, she held open the points at which she could connect. It was as if a small amount of energy flowed out of those points even when she wasn’t using them.

Lily wondered if that energy would glow if she could watch herself with her eyes closed. If so, did that mean animals had energy flowing out of them all the time? Could they also take energy in from the earth the way she had? And what about the people who glowed in her vision? She could believe Makana with her healing and Makana’s mother with her ability to sense auras had to use some sort of energy to do it. But what about Xavier and her dad who as far as anyone knew weren’t doing anything with whatever they had?

Maybe energy wasn’t the right way to think about it. While she’d love to believe she’d find answers in a physics classroom next year, she was pretty sure no scientist or science teacher would believe what she was seeing could be energy. Thinking of it as energy made her Dad and Xavier seem like anomalies. But thinking of it as magic was a dead end, because she knew even less about magic than physics. Maybe she should think of it as possibility. Maybe her Dad and Xavier were holding some sort of possibilities open all the time.

For a moment, Lily wondered if she would glow when she wasn’t touching soil. She wondered if she’d glow more brightly when she was touching soil or using magic than when she was merely outside and had the possibility of making a magical connection. Would she not glow inside? Would Xavier and her Dad not glow inside? She was pretty sure Makana would have, because she could use her healing inside, although there had been some sense that Makana’s magic was stronger in certain more natural and historically powerful places. After all, they’d first met by an ancient fishpond because Makana’s mother believed it made both their powers stronger.

Lily walked back to the levee and pushed her fingers as deep as she could into the hard packed dirt of the inner slope. She tried to open her connection to the murrelets, and it did seem slower and weaker. Of course, that could be due to her own expectations or to the birds being farther away. She tried to pull them closer and couldn’t help opening her eyes to see them for real as they cleared the reeds. They waddled a few steps and then seemed to notice how far away she was today.

They both took wing and flew!

The take offs were very much like her awkward little birds, but in the air they looked sort of great. One seemed to list to the right, and there was some strange swaying of their heads, but it fit with their flight and in just a moment they were both beside her. She wanted to reach out and touch them but knew they were still wild things. Then she realized touching them might break the connection. She wanted to try but sensed it would scare the birds whether the magic held or not.

Sitting with the birds for that moment was like seeing them for the first time, perhaps due to the change of place. She saw the white marks over one’s eyes were less distinct, less like eyebrows, and maybe that one was a little larger. If she was a kid with a pet, she might name that one “Wispy.” Then she thought of a Will o’ the Wisp and wanted to call the other one “Willow.” She wondered if the larger one with the wispy eye markings was a male, and the other one female. Then she figured the names didn’t have to follow human rules anyway, especially if she didn’t intend to share them with anyone else.

In less than a minute, she felt her connection to the murrelets grow fuzzy and shaky. They were probably nervous of predators out here in the open. She eased the pull connecting them to her and in a flurry of wings they flew back toward the marsh. Where they’d been, she saw a feather. She knew it had come from the bigger bird, the one with the less distinct eyebrows. It felt like a gift, even though she knew it had fallen by chance.

Lily carefully put the feather into her pocket. At home she put it in the photo display part of her wallet. Then she washed her hands, just in case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6

Trying

In art class on Wednesday, Lily discovered a dark charcoal drawing of train tracks on the right-hand wall by the side of the room. She noticed it immediately as she sat down, and it kept attracting her gaze as she worked. There was something haunting about it, but Lily didn’t know what. Somehow it drew the eye back again and again, right to the tracks, which looked ordinary in the picture. Somehow the picture was like a deep bowl where anyplace a person’s gaze fell, it would soon slide the rest of the way to the tracks.

Toward the end of the period she went up to read the signature, which she couldn’t quite make out from across the room. Sure enough, it was Pete’s. She’d only seen his sketches in a notebook before, but this was powerful. Maybe it was something from their conversation last week, but Lily thought it a definite point of view, and it was kind of scary.

 

After school at Stanford, the wetlands group held their first meeting with all five of them together. They sat at a table in a small break room with a box of donuts in the middle. Max was eating a chocolate donut. Dr. Martin was absorbed in something on his laptop. Audrey had been off studying at lunch, so Lily took the opportunity to tell her about Pete’s new artwork.

“Maybe I’ll stop by the art room to see it. You think it’s good?” Audrey asked.

“It kept drawing my attention, but it was a little disturbing.”

“You’re worried about him?”

“A bit.”

Audrey frowned, “Me too.”

Then Kelly came in and began by asking Lily and Audrey how everything was at school.

They both said, “Fine.”

Kelly nodded as if finding the answer to a question she hadn’t asked. “Do you think there’s too much stress there? Are your classes alright?”

Audrey said, “I can handle the work alright. But it helps to have a longer window in which to do things. Like the only time this independent study is hard is when we have a reading or something from Wednesday that we have to get through by Friday. Especially if I have a couple tests to study for on Friday.”

Lily could only think of the first proposal reading that had been given with that sort of deadline, but she also remembered staying up late to finish.

“Point noted. I’ll try not to make Wednesday to Friday deadlines unless I have to. Now, any specific thoughts or questions for the team?”

There was silence for a moment. Lily said, “I had a sort of question. I noticed one of the murrelets looks larger and the white eyebrow mark on the face is a little less clear. I was wondering if that meant it was a boy or a girl or if that’s just how different one bird looks from another.”

Dr. Martin looked up from his computer and nodded. Then he started tapping away.

No one else answered, and Audrey asked some questions about plants and belt transects, most of which Kelly answered.

Then Dr. Martin looked up and said, “I’m not finding anything specific about the facial markings. Males and females don’t differ significantly by size. Do you have pictures that show the differences?”

“I don’t know.” Lily pulled out her cell phone, and while she was at it her observations log and the feather. “The larger one with the wispy eye markings dropped this feather near me,” Lily said holding it out.

Dr. Martin took it right away. “Could I keep this?” he asked. “I might be able to get someone to run a genetic analysis.”

“Okay,” Lily was a little sad to give it up but glad Dr. Martin found it useful.

Then Kelly asked, “You didn’t touch the birds, did you?”

“No. It dropped when they flew away. I actually saw them fly for the first time on Sunday. I don’t have any photos of that, but I wrote it down.” She pointed in her log book then poked through her cell phone pictures, “I have this one that shows the marks above the eyes. You can’t see much size difference.”

She passed the phone and Max glanced at it, but Dr. Martin studied it, moving the phone closer and farther away. “Can you get me a copy of this?” he asked.

“Sure. Do you want it to your phone or email?”

Dr. Martin paused, “Email. Here.” He passed her his card. She waited, and he passed the phone back so she could send him the picture. Lily was glad her phone could do that much at least.

Then Kelly wanted to look. “It’s true, they come up very close to you. I mean, I had a zoom on my camera, but to get these shots with that cell phone, the birds must have been within ten feet.”

Lily shrugged.

“You’re not feeding them or anything?”

“No,” Lily didn’t know what to say. “Since that first day when I was finished with my quadrat and was sitting quietly waiting, they seemed curious about me.”

“Well, that probably means they haven’t learned to fear humans. I wish we knew how they came here and what they were living on.”

Dr. Martin said, “If you ever have the opportunity, you might collect some droppings we could analyze.”

Lily didn’t remember any such opportunity in the past, but she was willing to try. “What would I collect them in?”

“Can we get her some specimen containers?” Dr. Martin asked Kelly.

Kelly nodded. “Sure. You’re doing a good job with the murrelets,” she added to Lily. “Be careful you don’t start thinking of them as pets. They need to stay wild, and they probably need to go home pretty soon. Does something there list their mating season, Dr. Martin?”

“The records on nesting are a little unclear. I could probably look up specific studies in a different database, but for murrelets in general I’m seeing anything from January through May for hatching, after about a month of incubation. What is consistent for ancient murrelets is that the chicks are well developed at birth and after two or three days they go to sea with their parents to feed.

“You know, this pair of birds is not behaving like typical ancient murrelets. They’re rarely seen inland. If they come on land, it’s usually at night. They’re supposed to feed out at sea but they are known to get knocked inland by storms. You said you saw both of them fly?”

“Yeah,” Lily nodded vigorously, like she was defending her birds’ abilities.

“And they flew well? How far?”

“They didn’t fly far, and they kind of bobbed and one drifted right, but honestly, they looked a lot better flying than they do when walking. They sort of waddle when walking.”

“But neither one seemed injured?”

Lily shrugged.

“And these birds come out to you often?”

Lily nodded.

“They couldn’t be young who imprinted on her. You first saw them in early August?”

Lily nodded.

“Maybe some other human took care of them as chicks, maybe as a misguided rescue? The chicks could have imprinted on a human and then transferred that to Lily. Then they might have released them near here and the bird might not know how to live in the wild?”

“Someone should be able to tell if they’re that young from photos. Kelly has some good ones.” It was the first time Max had spoken in a while, and Lily felt kind of bad for sidetracking the meeting to be all about Murrelets.

“We need to find a murrelet expert. I’ll look online,” Dr. Martin said. Focusing again on his computer, he didn’t say anything further during the meeting. Lily kept quiet too, making time to eat a donut and let others talk.

 

Saturday on the bus, Lily typed part of an English essay. On BART she studied for science and paid more attention to not miss her stop. She only had to go right, then left, then right to get back to Circus Arts, but she was nervous she’d make a wrong turn. The neighborhood looked a little shabbier than it had in the dark. Some of the houses were still very nice and well cared for. But there was someone with his clothes and hair disheveled walking across four lanes of traffic with no concern for crosswalks. A woman in front of the grocery story asked her for money to buy food for her children, but Lily said, “Sorry, I don’t have any.” It wasn’t true. But she thought showing she had money might be worse. She was worried enough about carrying a laptop in her backpack, but hoped no one would guess from her black sweatpants and purple sweatshirt that she’d be carrying anything of value.

She reached the circus school about twenty minutes early. They already had her paperwork, so she signed in at the front desk and began to stretch. The science notes in her backpack seemed to nag her conscience. She could probably study while stretching, but she didn’t want to be antisocial on her first visit. She and Xavier had signed up for a mixed level, mixed ages aerial class. Lily had no idea what the other students would be like.

There was a beginner class on flying trapeze, and Lily enjoyed listening to them and their teachers as she stretched. There was also a class on the trampoline, but they didn’t seem to talk much. One of the girls she’d seen perform with the youth team came out of the snack room and started stretching, and Lily wondered if she’d be in the mixed aerial class. They didn’t say anything to each other, but there was a camaraderie to stretching in the same space.

Then Xavier showed up. He was wearing fairly tight gray sweatpants and a UC Berkeley tee shirt. His hair was a little flattened from wearing a bike helmet, and as soon as he’d removed his shoes, he came over to sit by Lily.

“You made it,” he said.

“You sound surprised.”

“No, I’m stalling so you won’t tell me to stretch like that.”

Lily had been stretching her middle splits, which she’d taken some care to maintain in her year away from circus. She sat back into straddle. “You want to start with something more like this?”

She took him through straddle and some other basic stretches before class began. He told her about his dorm and assignments, and it was a lot more comfortable than talking in her room at home.

In class, Xavier was the only true beginner. The teacher showed him a basic way to begin on trapeze and made sure he had it before going on to help others. By that time, JoAnne from the youth team had introduced herself to Lily and they were taking turns on a lyra, a metal hoop wrapped in athletic tape that hung from a rope. JoAnne was petite and compact, so her moves were customized for speed and strength. She spoke with an accent that Lily couldn't identify but could mostly understand. Even without music it was clear she’d work to something cute and bouncy, whereas Lily usually favored more dramatic flowing routines. But it was fun to work with another teen. Lily didn’t ask JoAnne’s age, but she volunteered that she went to a private Catholic High School, so they had to be pretty close. There were also two adult women in the class, both with skill levels in between Lily and Xavier.

When the teacher came to see Lily she said, “I’m Marta. You’re new here, aren’t you?” Then she started in right away to correct Lily’s posture while sitting on the bar. Lily was a little startled and wondered if she’d gotten sloppy or if her coach hadn’t minded that detail. Then the teacher asked Lily what moves she was still working on, and Lily admitted Toe and Heel Hang were her weaknesses. That’s what she worked on for most of class. Marta had some useful advice on Toe Hang, but Lily didn’t get any farther than she ever had.

She did see Marta teach Xavier an Iron Cross later in the class. Xavier did it well almost immediately, and Lily wondered if the teacher had expected that and wanted to teach him something he could succeed at right off. She hoped Xavier was having fun, but she couldn’t tell. He seemed his usual nonchalant self.

At the end of class they did ten minutes of conditioning, and Xavier did better than anyone except JoAnne. Lily decided she’d gotten too out of shape and should start doing pushups, pull ups, and V ups every day. That would probably work out as well as visiting her birds every day, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

After she’d cleaned up and pulled her sweatpants back on over her tights, Xavier was waiting.

“I don’t suppose you’d let me walk you to the BART station?” he asked.

Lily shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know. I thought it would be nice to talk for a bit before you head back.”

Lily looked around the gym. There wasn’t any good place to sit and talk, not unless the snack area happened to be empty. It would be nice to walk outside. Lily realized she hadn’t thought about Xavier nearly as much during the last week, and while she’d been aware of him throughout class today, she hadn’t thought anything that would have led to embarrassment. It wouldn’t be her preferred solution, but she wondered if she’d be more willing to experiment with Xavier outside if she got over her recent crush.

“Did you like the class?” Lily asked.

“Sure. I’m fine with being the only beginner. Hopefully no one will hold it against guys in general.”

“You did well, better than me on the conditioning. Would you want to try again?”

“Sure. I’d kind of like to try a flying trapeze class sometime if you’re interested.”

“Next weekend?”

They went to the office and signed up. Then Lily said goodbye to Xavier and waited several minutes after he left before she headed out the door to the BART stop. As she walked, she looked for a coffee shop or someplace where they might be able to hang out after the next class, figuring they could walk there separately, but she didn’t find anyplace better than the snack area at the gym.

 

On her way to school, the scream of sirens gave Lily the shakes.

Reaching the corner, she saw a fire truck pulled in front of the railroad tracks. She knew there were police or an ambulance or both on the other side, because there was another siren making a different sound.

She got off her bike, but a police officer was telling everyone to keep moving. She was still shaking and her vision seemed wrong, like she was assuming most of what she saw. Lily didn’t get back on her bike. She walked her bike down the busy street to the right.

At the next intersection, she saw Pete. He was sitting on the sidewalk with his knees up, elbows on knees, face in hands. She stopped and parked her bike up against someone’s shrub. Then she went and sat beside him.

“Hey, Pete, can I sit here too?”

He nodded without taking his head out of his hands. Lily sat down.

“Anything I can do?”

Pete shook his head.

She stayed. She couldn’t think of anything useful to offer, but it felt more right to sit there with Pete than to keep going to school.

A few passersby asked if they knew what had happened. Pete didn’t respond. Lily shook her head. A clump of bicyclists glanced their way from the corner, but they went on. Some guy who had to walk down the sidewalk they sat on asked if they were okay, to which Pete nodded. Lily did too. When a girl asked if either of them needed anything, they both shook their heads.

After a while there were very few students, and Lily guessed they were late for school.

Finally Pete said, “I saw before they chased everyone away. It was Dan Donaldson. He’s an art student. A sophomore. I know my picture couldn’t have made him do this, but I keep thinking about it, about what if I’d chosen a point of view that discouraged it. I was all caught up in my own experience, and I didn’t think how my art might affect others. Dan threw himself in front of a train right at the place I drew.”

Lily didn’t say anything for a while. She thought about reaching out to touch Pete, but by the time she thought it through, it seemed too late. All the normal things to say sounded stupid. Finally, she said, “I think you should make art that matters to you. The teacher decides what to put up. That’s her job.”

Pete didn’t react. Lily couldn’t have proven he even heard her.

They sat there for a long time, until Lily started to get sore from the hard ground and not moving. She wanted to go home, but neither of her parents was there. She didn’t want to be alone. “Would you walk to school with me?” she asked Pete.

He shook his head. She didn’t want to leave him alone or go to school on her own. They both stayed there.

Eventually a car driving down their little side street pulled over across from them. The woman driving rolled down her window and asked, “Do you kids need anything?”

Pete shook his head, but Lily didn’t think the woman could see.

Lily said, “No, thank you.”

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” the woman asked from her car window across the street.

“He’s upset,” Lily said.

“Still, you should get to school or someone might call the police, or the school.”

“Okay,” Lily said.

The woman looked at her like that was not the right answer. Then she pulled out her phone and started dialing.

Lily said quietly to Pete, “I think she’s calling someone to come get us. Do you want that, or should we just go to school?”

Pete looked up. There were red marks where his face had rested against his hands for so long.

“I guess we have to go sometime,” he said. He stood up without looking at Lily or at the driver.

Lily stood up and got her bike. She said to the woman, “We’re going.” Then she followed Pete across the street.

They walked to the loop where they went under the expressway. Lily wasn’t quite sure if Pete would go all the way to school, but he was following the right path. Lily followed him. She was glad the driver didn’t bother to see where they went.

Only when they crossed the street to the school did Lily realized they were really there. Nothing about the day seemed real so far. She headed toward the office figuring they’d have to get some sort of admit slip for being late. Pete started to wander off down a side walkway, and Lily said, “Don’t we have to go to the office?”

Pete nodded and looked at her, “Yeah, sorry.”

They got to the office, and Lily locked up her bike. Then they walked in together, and Pete led the way to a desk where no one currently sat. He stood there. Lily stood too, not knowing if that was procedure or if Pete couldn't bring himself to do anything more.

After only a minute or so a woman in a flowered shirt with a name tag labeling her “Attendance Administrator” came over and asked them why they were late.

Pete didn’t answer. Lily said, “He was sitting a block away from the train tracks, and I sat with him for a while.”

“Do you want to see a counselor?” the admin asked.

Pete shook his head. Lily said “no”.

The woman asked for their names and wrote them tardy slips to take to class.

Lily followed Pete until he went into a classroom. Then she checked her watch and went to her own class, slightly surprised that it was still first period.

She had chemistry first today. The teacher took the tardy slip and kept lecturing as if nothing had happened. Lily sat down and looked around. Lots of people looked at her. Maybe she imagined it, but it seemed like every pair of eyes knew she’d been late for some reason to do with the train track and Dan Donaldson. It seemed like every student was only thinking about that, and no one was listening to the teacher. There were, of course, a few people taking notes. It wasn’t as if notes helped much with this class at the best of times, and under the circumstance, Lily knew she wasn’t ready to learn anything. She sat and sometimes looked at the board.

 

At lunch Lily sat with Audrey, who seemed relatively normal and already knew it was Dan Donaldson who’d tried to committed suicide on the tracks that morning. She said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have discouraged you from worrying about Pete. Dan was a lot like him, only shorter and not as good looking.”

“Pete was sitting a block away from the tracks this morning. He said he’d seen Dan before they chased everyone away, and he was worried the drawing he did of the tracks might have influenced Dan.”

“That’s silly. People don’t try suicide because of a drawing.”

Lily wondered if she should have mentioned that as an argument to Pete, but she didn’t think it would have helped. Art was important to Pete. It might be important to his decisions. She wondered briefly if there was something she could draw to help Pete, but her drawing was so bad compared to his that she couldn’t imagine following through.

“Do you think I should tell the counselors about Pete?” Lily asked as she finished her sandwich.

“They’re going to do something after lunch anyway.”

Sure enough, after lunch there were school counselors or community volunteers in every sophomore class. Lily had no idea how they gathered that many people that fast.

The counselor in Lily’s class started by confirming that a student had jumped in front of a train and it appeared to be a suicide attempt. She said that they were planning to talk to every class in the school that afternoon about suicide, what people could do if they felt suicidal or depressed, and what others in the community could do to express and work through their feelings. Lily had trouble listening. At the end of the hour she still didn’t know if she should do something about Pete.

After school, she looked for him by the tracks. He wasn’t there, and she hoped that was a good sign.

 

At dinner that night Lily’s whole family sat down to chicken casserole and broccoli with parmesan that her dad had made.

Her mom had only come home five minutes before and hadn’t had time to talk with anyone yet. She turned to Lily first thing and said, “Your principal sent an email saying a student attempted suicide on the train tracks near the school. Did you know the boy involved? Are people at school very upset?”

“I hadn’t met him. One of the guys from the Summer Conservation Corps, Pete, is pretty upset. He’d made some art about the tracks, and I think he knew the guy, Dan Donaldson. Oh, and Pete and I both got tardies this morning because I was sitting with him, and we were late to school.”

Lily’s mom nodded. “No one called about the tardy. Maybe the school isn’t counting those today.”

“Mom,” Rose said, “They don’t call for a single tardy.”

“You seem pretty sure of that,” Dad said to Rose.

Rose smiled her fake sweet smile. She’d been wearing darker makeup lately and her lips were outlined in a shade close to black. The liner around her eyes was heavy and dramatic, making the parody of a smile look a bit sinister.

Lily’s mom continued to Lily, “Is it bothering you?”

Lily thought before answering. “I was worried about Pete. And I got all shaky just hearing the sirens today, which was partly why I ended up sitting on the sidewalk with Pete. I don’t know. It’s weird to try to think about studying when everyone’s dealing with this stuff, but it must be worse for the people who really knew the guy.”

Rose cut in with, “I wouldn’t be so sure. Sometimes the people stuck on the outside get hurt the most.”

Their mother looked at Rose, “Is something bothering you, Rose?”

Lily could have sworn that her sister sat straighter and came more alive with the shift of attention. Then Rose said, “I think it’s very unhealthy the way some people keep secrets in this family.”

Lily’s dad looked at Lily, but her mom kept looking at Rose and said, “How so dear?”

“Well, I know there was a bunch of weird stuff with people disappearing in New Mexico, and I think Dad, Lily, Kei, and Makana were all involved with some kind of magic when we were in Hawaii. Now that Xavier’s turned up again, it seems like he and Lily are always hiding in her room to talk or whispering in our living room. I think they even brought dad in on some of it, and dad always tells mom stuff. I’m guessing everyone knows except me.”

It always stunned Lily when her sister showed how observant she could be. She also felt spied upon and worried about what else Rose overheard.

Finally, their dad said, “We talked in New Mexico, because that clearly involved the whole family. We’ve were a bit more discreet with some issues in Hawaii where that involved the privacy of others. But I’ll admit, I have been keeping your mother filled in, and it may have been uncomfortable if you felt like other people in the family were keeping secrets from you. Lily, I think it’s yours to tell.”

“I’d rather not,” Lily answered. It came out quieter than she’d expected. She thought she could stall a few days by saying she’d already had enough emotional trauma with the suicide attempt and everything. Then she realized that with Rose involved, waiting would only make things worse. Besides, her dad kept watching her expectantly.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ve been trying to figure out whatever magic I have. When I'm outside, especially in some special places, I can close my eyes and see animals as glowing lights and maybe call them to me. Very few people glow. Dad and Xavier are the only two I know here that do. I'm still not sure if or when I might be able to affect their actions. I think it's fair to work discuss that privately with them.”

“But what makes them special?” Rose asked with her eyes and hands wide open.

Lily could only shake her head. “I don’t know. It didn’t come with an instruction book.”

“Does who glows ever change?” Rose practically whined.

That was a question Lily hadn’t thought to ask. It was a rather good question too, but she decided not to say so to her sister. “I don’t know. I can only tell sometimes in some places, and I haven’t experimented that much.”

“Why not? If I had something like that, I’d spend all my time figuring it out until I knew how it worked.”

Rose was jealous. Lily couldn't help gaping, even as her mind spun. She had to admit at least to herself, that she’d given up on experimenting with people. There were a lot of conflicting feelings involved that she didn’t want to discuss with her sister. She’d tried harder to understand the animal part, but even there, she hadn’t pushed as hard as she could have. Finally she said, “I don’t know. I don’t want to risk hurting anyone or any animals, and I’m not sure where the energy involved comes from or if it might be bad to use too much.”

“What energy?” Rose asked.

“Energy might be the wrong word. There’s something I feel, a pull or connection to the animals or occasional people.”

“Can you turn it off?” Rose pried.

“Can I turn you off?” Lily tried to turn it into a joke.

“Girls,” her mom said on a rising, warning note.

“Why don’t we give Lily a chance to eat,” their Dad said. “I haven’t heard anything about your day, Rose.”

With that, it was over, and Lily realized she hadn’t yet touched a bite of her dinner.

 

Tuesday Lily stalled after school hoping she’d see Pete and could check how he was doing, but he wasn’t by the tracks or anyplace else that she looked. Wednesday she rushed over to Stanford and didn’t have time to look for Pete. Thursday she looked both during school and after. Friday she looked around the art room to see if there was anything new Pete had made, but she didn’t find anything. His previous picture showing the train tracks was no longer displayed. Lily stayed after class to talk to the art teacher.

“Do you know if Pete has art later today?”

“Pete who?”

Lily realized she didn’t know his last name. “The one who drew the picture of the train tracks that used to be right there?” She pointed.

“Are you a friend of his?”

“Yeah, a little at least.”

The teacher looked at her and looked around the classroom. Lily glanced around too and didn’t see anyone paying attention to them.

“Do you think I should be worried about Pete?”

Lily didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure whether speaking to the art teacher about someone who clearly cared about art was better or worse than alerting a counselor. She wondered if the teacher had her own reasons to be concerned or was only suspicious because Lily mentioned the drawing of the train tracks.

Finally Lily said, “I guess I’m worried, but I don’t know if I should be.”

The teacher nodded and bit her lip. “Pete should have art last period today, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t show up.”

Lily started to turn away and the teacher said, “Lily, I’m glad you spoke with me. If it helps you worry any less, I’ll do what I can for him. And you can come talk to me anytime.”

Lily nodded and left the room as fast as she could without attracting attention.

After school she walked by the art room. Pete wasn’t among the students leaving or those still inside, but it looked like half the class had left before she got there. She kept her eyes open in the halls and then lingered by the train tracks for a while.

A student she didn’t know stopped to ask, “Are you okay?”

Lily told her she was waiting for a friend. But it discouraged Lily from waiting much longer. She needed to get out to the wetlands anyway. She was hoping to convince a bird to poop.

 

 

 

 

 

7

Experimenting

Saturday, she arrived at Circus Arts early having followed Xavier’s example and biked to and from BART. It was a long way, but not as hot and dusty as where they'd biked in New Mexico.

JoAnne was already stretching, and Lily said “hi.” She took off the sweats she’d worn over her circus clothes. She’d chosen mostly black today, with a few purple strips across the top. Normally she was a bit more colorful than that, but she was thinking serious thoughts about the suicide attempt at school and the unexpected discussion with her sister. Black had appealed to her this time

Xavier barely made it in before the flying trapeze class started. Nonetheless, Joanne managed to greet him, ask his major, and find out where he’d gone to high school before she split off for the mixed aerial class. Lily was annoyed, and then told herself she shouldn’t be. It wasn’t as if Xavier was her boyfriend or as if he was ignoring Lily for JoAnne. Xavier was wearing fairly tight sweats, because that was suggested for guys doing flying trapeze who didn’t want to buy circus tights. Lily didn’t bother to tell herself she shouldn’t notice how good he looked in them, and then she decided she could accept being a little annoyed with JoAnne.

Flying trapeze was great. The coaches had a regular progression of tricks they taught. Xavier started at the beginning. Lily was only a little farther along, since she hadn’t done that much flying before. At the end, they each had two turns with a catcher. Both Xavier and Lily made both of their catches.

When they put away the safety belts at the end Xavier asked, “Have time to hang out and do a little conditioning today?”

Lily smiled, still full of adrenaline. “I have less homework this weekend than I may ever have again.”

“Why’s that?” Xavier asked.

“I’ll tell you after. Let’s do some conditioning.”

They started with pushups. After thirty Lily switched to leg lifts, but Xavier kept going.

“Last week, I looked for a coffee shop or something we might go to after here, but I didn’t find one. Is there anything your way?”

Xavier stopped his pushups and lay on his stomach, chin resting on his hands. “Sure, there’s a place less than a mile out. Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Lily started, “I mean, maybe we should bike separately, but if you don’t have too much homework,” he rolled his eyes better than Rose usually managed, “I thought it might be nice to talk.”

“Are we still doing conditioning first?”

“A little more.”

He shook his head and smiled, “I will work for my coffee.”

They did crunches and pull ups and cleaned themselves up.

As the gather their things Xavier asked, “Can we bike together or do I have to give directions and worry about getting you lost?”

“You really want to be outside with me?”

He sighed, then said, “You guessed?”

Lily sighed as well, but figured it was about as safe as they could get. This urban backwater shouldn’t have much exposed soil or natural magic. She wouldn’t want anything of Xavier that might hurt him, which meant she wouldn’t want anything much while he was biking. At least, she hoped that was how it worked.

They put their helmets on and retrieved their bikes. Lily wasn’t planning to talk during the ride, but before they even started he twisted around on his bike seat and said, “All systems go?”

“Just lead,” she said.

“Testy while testing.”

Lily rolled her eyes, but Xavier didn't turn around to see. Tests were unpleasant under any circumstances. Testing her magic or her self-control this way actually frightened Lily. But she'd worked through plenty of fears in circus and with moving to new places. Lily wasn't going to let this defeat her.

Xavier biked ahead of her in his tight sweatpants. She tried not to let that distract her or gather any other thoughts in her mind. Checking to see if she felt any pull toward Xavier brought back nothing. It might help that her feet weren’t even touching the ground let alone through pavement and sneakers and in an urban setting. Maybe biking was safer than walking for them.

It took only a couple minutes to reach the coffee shop. The name freaked her out for a moment; it was called “Sacred Grounds”.

As they parked their bikes Xavier looked at her and smiled. “So far so good?”

“Yes, but I’ll still be happier inside.”

He held the door for her, and she truly was happier once she passed through it.

The coffee shop was dark despite the four windows on the front wall and a couple of ceiling fans with lights. There were scarf-like hangings around the windows, probably chosen to let as much light in as possible, or perhaps to go with the new age-y name. Lily went to the counter and ordered a mocha from a dark-skinned man with multiple piercings wearing a Jimi Hendrix shirt. He half-danced to music playing quietly in the background while he made it, then slid the cup the few inches across the counter to her. She couldn't help but smile at his presentation. Lily chose a table by a front window and waited while Xavier ordered plain coffee and the guy danced his way through that as well.

When he sat down she said, “The name is a little ironic.”

“Would you believe me if I said I hadn’t noticed until we got here?”

“Not really.”

“Fair enough. So, to what do I owe the change of heart? Lack of homework?”

“Well, surprisingly, they’re related.” She explained about the suicide attempt her school and the conversation that led to her sister complaining and claiming she'd do more to figure it out if she had magic.

“Are you okay?” Xavier asked.

Lily realized she hadn’t yet taken a sip of her mocha. She did, and it was good.

“I think so, but I guess Rose got to me.”

“Any idea why?”

“Maybe because I feel guilty. There are a lot of people who would probably be very excited to do even the slightly weird stuff I do.”

Xavier looked down into his coffee.

“Right,” Lily caught his frog frown as he looked up and knew, “I’ve been pretty thoughtless, haven’t I?”

Xavier smiled around his frown but didn’t look any less sad. “That may have hit kind of close to home.” He looked sheepish, not angry. “But I could have said something.”

“Have you been trying to do your own experiments?”

“A few.” He smiled, and she knew it had been more than a few.

“And?”

“Nothing yet. But I have a rather large set of possibilities to cover.”

“I hate to say this, but what if I’m wrong? What if when I see people glow it doesn’t mean they have magic? What if they just have some genetic variant that makes me sense them differently?”

Lily felt dreadful saying it, but Xavier shrugged, “Then I’m only special in your eyes.”

Lily closed her eyes and a tear escaped.

“No,” Xavier said, reaching out to touch her arm. “Whether or not I turn out to have even the smallest, stupidest magic possible, I am happy knowing that you do and that at whatever pace you choose, you are trying to figure it out.”

“Thanks,” Lily said. She couldn’t believe she’d teared up like that. “I think this week has me too wound up.”

“Of course it does. Tell me about it.”

It seemed like they both became aware of his hand on her arm at the same moment. He gave her a quick squeeze and removed it, but he kept looking at her closely. She told him about Pete and the art teacher and all the weirdness of school in general, even how some of her teachers had cut back on homework for the week. “But there’s one part that’s eating away at me.”

Xavier waited, and finally finishing his coffee said, “Well?”

“It’s going to sound stupid—”

“Not to me.”

She knew he meant it. “Pete was upset because his art might have influenced someone to step in front of a train, even if he hadn’t meant it to. What if my magic has unintended consequences? What if, as an example, magic drained happiness from people in the area, and the suicide rate went up?”

“Do you have any reason to suspect that?” Xavier asked, suddenly very still and serious.

“No. It could as easily be that people diverting the creek messes up some nature magic that then depresses all the humans and animals in the area. When the magic seems to direct me, it might be using me to fix some problem.”

“Where did you get these ideas?”

Lily felt sick and couldn't even sip her mocha. “I feel like I’m toying with something huge with no idea what the real risks are. If Pete’s worried about influencing people with a drawing, shouldn’t I worry about calling rare birds or making you…” She couldn’t finish. She’d almost said, “Making you like me,” but even thinking it made her want to scream.

Xavier’s fingers stretched out on the table, like he wanted to reach out to her but held back. He tilted his head a little to the left and shook it, like she had it all wrong. Never before had she wanted to have it all wrong.

“First,” he said, “Everyone influences everyone all the time. If you’re going to worry that you’re the butterfly who flaps her wings, changes the air currents, and kills thousands of people via hurricane, then you won’t dare to move let alone experiment with magic. You agree that Pete shouldn’t blame himself, right?”

Lily nodded, wanting Xavier to argue away all her worries, even as she knew it was more complicated. Of course, she could absolve Pete in her own mind, but if she was Pete, she could never fully absolve herself.

“Second, there’s a difference between influence and compulsion. You can’t really know the difference without experimenting. If your dad and I want to be part of those experiments, then I don’t see a problem.”

“And if it turns out I can control people with magic, but that I can’t always control what my magic makes them do?”

Xavier reached out and touched her arm then, very softly, a couple fingers stretched across her wrist. “There’ll be plenty of time to worry about that if it turns out to be true. I’m more concerned now about any influence or compulsion the magic might set on you. Do you really think that’s happening?”

Lily couldn’t turn her mind that way at the moment. The light touch of Xavier’s fingers on her wrist seemed to contrast with his serious words, and she felt like they were alone in a bubble at the center of the universe.

The bubble popped when he removing his hand saying, “How are the birds, anyway?”

“You’ll like this,” she said, forcing herself to let the moment go and continue with what might pass as normal conversation between them. “Yesterday, I tried to magic a bird into pooping.”

He laughed. “Did it work?”

“Not at all. I don’t think the bird even noticed.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, I still have the sample collector. I figure a bird that size probably can’t hold if for too long. Tomorrow I'll sit out near the border of the high plants and call the murrelets to where I could see them but where they were still protected from predators. Then I’ll try to keep them there until one of them spills it. After that, I ease the connection. The birds walk away, and I swoop in with my sample collector.”

“Brilliant,” he smiled, “And a truly bizarre experiment in its own right.”

He sat back far in his chair. She thought there must be something more he wanted from their conversation. Finally, he leaned forward again and said, “Why don’t you think up some experiments for me? It might help figure out my stuff, too.”

Not at all convinced she could come up with anything useful, Lily couldn’t bring herself to be that negative when he’d listened to her talk about everything from teen suicide to bird guano. “I’ll try,” she said.

Xavier didn’t even object when she wanted to leave first, rather than deal with saying goodbyes outside.

 

Lily decided Sunday was for the birds. She’d finished all her homework in only a few hours the night before, and it seemed very possible that would never happen again. She got up early, put on sunscreen, dressed in layers, packed plenty of food, and gathered everything she needed to observe murrelets.

Out at the wetlands, she didn’t call the birds to her immediately. With her eyes closed and hands on the ground, she opened herself to seeing all the life around her. She was confident now that she could observe without changing their behavior. That let her focus on understand the basic patterns. Her mouse was asleep at ground level over to her left. She found several other still, sleeping lives scattered around the drier levels of the marsh. Her great egret was moving at a steady speed along a curving path, and Lily imagined it was following a wet channel and occasionally gobbling up food. She sensed other animals moving along similar paths and imagined they likely fed the same way. Then there were dots that paused and arched into flight, those that stayed still but were not sleeping, and those that skittered seemingly at random. There was also plenty of life swimming or floating in the wetter part of the marsh and out into the bay.

When she first found them, her murrelets were out over the waters of the bay. Lily gradually let her tracking of other creatures fade, so she could concentrate solely on the movements of Wispy and Willow. From this distance, she couldn’t tell which was which, but she tried to sense the differences in the two connections. They were both flying and at least one was occasionally swooping into the water, as far as Lily could tell, it was always, or almost always, the same one swooping into the water. If the murrelets were feeding, their food was too small to show as life to Lily’s senses. She was fine with that but wondered if one was full or if there was a problem. Neither connection seemed stressed or nervous. Lily let herself enjoy the movements of her most unusual birds.

At first she’d hoped to wait until they were done flying and feeding before she called them in for observation. When there was no sign they’d be coming in soon, she gave up and let the connection between herself and the birds draw them to her. They came flying over the marshlands and landed beside her. Lily opened her eyes in time to identify Willow as the one who hadn’t been diving into the water, but she didn’t see any sign of injury or stress.

Lily had sat very close to the reeds and grasses so that her birds wouldn’t be out in the open too much or exposed to unnecessary danger. Now they waddled around right next to her, wet and glimmering in the sun. Lily took a few pictures with her cell phone. Then she tried to ease the connection between the birds and herself. As she did so they retreated a little, to where there was better cover. Lily found it easy to maintain enough of a connection to keep them in clear view, and she looked around to make sure no other people walking or biking by had noticed how the birds flew straight to her. There wasn’t another person in sight.

She studied the area around the murrelets for any existing bird guano that might make her uncertain later, but there was nothing fresh that hadn’t been washed away in the morning damp. She took a few more pictures, recorded the time, 9:15, in her notebook, and settled in to watch for when her birds would poop.

At first it was a little boring, but around ten the birds started doing something new. Wispy poked at Willow’s feathers, along her neck, and then Willow returned the favor. It looked like they were grooming each other, although the feathers hadn’t looked mussed to Lily.

There was none of the vibration in their connection that Lily had interpreted as the birds being nervous with her or with their surroundings. They didn’t seem to mind having her as a human observer even when she took some pictures.

Eventually, the two birds settled down a little way away from each other. Neither of them seemed to have pooped yet, but Lily was getting sore from sitting in one position for so long. She was pretty sure she could hold her connection to the birds now even if she stood and stretched a bit. Carefully, she removed her hands from the ground and stretched her arms and shoulders. It was harder to see the birds as lights, but she could still feel a nice, steady connection. That made her brave enough to stand and stretch her back and legs. She moved slowly trying not to be startling, and the murrelets seemed fine with it.

The connection she felt to the birds was still constant, but her sight of them with closed eyes faded away. She opened her eyes again and was surprised to see that there were a couple of people walking along the levee. They glanced at her, and she wondered if they thought her peculiar for sitting out there. They probably wouldn’t notice the little murrelets in the reeds even when Lily sat facing that way.

Lily felt her connection to the murrelets become less stable. She sat with her legs crossed differently and put her hands back to the ground. The connection steadied, and her birds looked at her in their unreadable bird way. She closed her eyes and saw them as reassuring blobs of light. Then she looked back toward the levee and confirmed that she couldn’t see any people that way. She opened her eyes and located the couple she had seen before on the other levee trail. They didn’t seem to be interested in her at the moment.

She went back to watching the murrelets. Still no guano.

It was approaching noon and Lily was getting drowsy when she noticed a quick nervousness pulsing through her connection to the birds. She looked around and saw a woman in what might be a ranger shirt approaching rapidly behind her. Lily’s first reaction was to think “Stop,” which hadn’t worked with Pete and didn’t work here. The woman approaching raised a hand and looked like she was about to shout at Lily from twenty feet away.

Lily’s second instinct was to put a finger to her lips, removing her right hand from the ground. She could clearly feel her connection to the birds with only one hand on the ground. A quick survey showed her birds still looked about the same, no visible signs of fear, no signs of guano either. Lily briefly closed her eyes and confirmed that the person approaching did not glow, before looking at her the normal way again.

The ranger did seem to have slowed down and was approaching more quietly now. Lily used her right hand to pull her Stanford research badge from the front of her notebook. Her birds were actually calming down again, and Lily slowly extended her arm back to show the badge to the ranger.

By this point, Lily could see the emblem on the ranger’s shirt and that she wore a nametag. She couldn’t read the name tag, and she assumed the ranger couldn’t read Lily’s badge yet. All she could do was hope to keep the birds still even if the ranger came up beside her, since it appeared that was what the ranger intended to do. Lily set her badge down on the ground and moved her observation notebook beside it, opened to the front page where it said she was observing ancient murrelets temporarily living in the Faber Tract. She wished she’d written the Marshland Conservation Study Team information there as well, but she hadn’t previously thought of using the notebook to communicate when she didn’t dare talk. Instead, once Lily set down the notebook, she pointed slowly at the birds visible at the base of the reeds and grasses.

The ranger was squinting in the right direction, although Lily wasn’t sure she could see the murrelets yet. Still, the ranger moved slowly and quietly. If it was part of a ranger’s job to lead nature hikes or even bird walks, then Lily hoped this one could do whatever was needed without scaring her birds.

The ranger finally came close enough to look at the badge and booklet. The murrelets were still in place, although Lily could feel their fear and felt bad for causing it. The ranger squatted by the notebook and read a few pages. She flipped to the back and pulled a pen, quite slowly, from her pocket. She wrote a note and held it up for Lily to see. It said, “CALL ME LATER TODAY,”          in big block letters and had the rangers’ name and phone number written somewhat smaller below.

Lily nodded.

The ranger used her pen to write something on her hand. She was copying from Lily’s Stanford badge, so Lily guessed it was her name. The ranger then slowly backed away. Immense relief flooded Lily and her connection to the birds quieted, too. As she looked back at the birds, she saw that Willow had a decent sized spot of guano a couple inches from where it was now standing. Lily hadn’t seen it come out, but there was no chance any other bird had come in to do it.

She waited until the ranger was completely out of sight and her birds were completely calm before she eased the connection, letting the birds waddle off to whatever they’d do next. Then she used her sample collector to gather the still wet droppings as neatly as she could.

As soon as that was put away, Lily realized she hadn’t eaten lunch yet and was starving, but it seemed best to go home and wash her hands at this point. As she biked, Lily thought about how she’d instinctively thought “STOP” at both Pete and the ranger. She was fairly certain it was the way her mind projected things she wanted that might affect the few humans out there with whom she could magically connect. This gave her an idea for a further experiment, but she wasn’t sure she liked it very much.

At home, Lily washed and then ate lunch straight away. She felt much better after eating and called the ranger, who turned out to be named Melody Gianni.

“Hi, is this Melody Gianni?”

“Yes.”

“This is Lily Thompson. You saw me watching the murrelets out at the Faber Tract.”

“Glad you called. I’m supposed to take down information on anyone spotted out there off the trails. Your Stanford badge looks fine, but honestly, you look a little young.”

“I’m actually a Palo Alto High student doing an independent studies project with Kelly Simonian at Stanford.”

“Okay, you’re under eighteen then?”

“Yeah, is that a problem?”

“I’m going to have to get some information from the responsible adult. Do you have a phone number for Kelly Simonian?”

Lily used her phone to find the number she’d had since Kelly first came to visit the Youth Conservation Corps. She gave it to Melody and asked, “Is Kelly going to get in trouble over this?”

“Probably not. Being with Stanford, she probably has or can get all the needed permissions. Still, if you’re going to be out there, especially on weekends, you might want to get a shirt or sign made that can identify you as a researcher to people walking by on the levee. It was a couple of well-meaning bird watchers who brought you to my attentions today. For all they knew you were a kid off the path and possibly feeding the birds. They wanted to do what was right.”

“That’s fair. I appreciated that you didn’t scare off the murrelets.”

“That’s another thing. I’d never heard of ancient murrelets until I saw your notebook. I came back and looked online, and they’re not usually found inland, in a marsh, or even in this area. Are you sure that’s what you’ve found?”

“We’re pretty sure. Kelly thinks so, and we have a feather and lots of pictures that we’re sending to some other expert.”

“Well, okay kid. It’s been interesting talking to you, and I hope your research goes well.”

Lily said thanks and goodbye and went to find her dad.

He was outside cleaning the gutters. Lily stood at the bottom of his ladder and said, “Hey Dad, when you have time, I want to run an idea by you.”

He came right down the ladder and Lily worried that her wanting it could have made it happen, but she didn’t think she’d wanted it that way.

“Any excuse for a break. What’s up?” He pulled amazingly filthy gloves off his hands as he asked.

Lily waved him inside and closed the back door. “I had something happen twice where my first reaction was to think ‘stop’ at someone. Neither of the people were ones that glow when I close my eyes, but I thought it might have worked if they had been.”

“You want me to walk around and see if I stop when you think ‘stop’ at me?”

“That would be the first way to test it.”

Her dad licked his lips. “Out with it.”

“I don’t think it will work if I only want it as an experiment. It might only work if you’re in danger of tripping or running into something that makes me seriously want you to stop. You might have to walk through the back yard blindfolded and risk falling or getting bruised or scraped to test this. Unless you can think of a better way?”

Her dad shook his head. “I doubt I can get too hurt in my own backyard. But let’s try the safe version first. “

Back outside, he began to walk away from her. Lily tried to think “Stop” the way she had in the wetlands and at the train tracks. It didn’t work at all. She tried to feel her connection to her dad, but it wasn’t strong enough. She pulled off her shoes and socks. Her dad glanced at her and smiled in understanding, but he kept walking.

With her feet on the ground, Lily could feel the connection to her dad well enough. It was fuzzy, almost the way the birds' connection felt when they were nervous. She wondered if that meant her dad was nervous or if that was more standard for humans. She tried projecting ‘STOP!’ again, but her dad didn’t even slow down. She dug her toes through the grass and into the top layer of soil, but her “STOP!” still had no effect.

Finally she called out loud, “Dad, it’s not working.”

He came over to her. “Okay, I’ll go wash my hands and find something to use as a blindfold. You come around front and get me when you’ve set up whatever obstacles you need.”

Lily didn’t know how he could be so matter of fact about it, but that was her dad.

She set to work adding tripping hazards and a low clothesline to their backyard. It didn’t take her long to set up, because she wanted enough room for him to walk a few moments while she tried to stop him.

Soon she went around front to get her dad.

Standing barely inside the doorway he said loudly, “Do you really think I’d agree to this?”

Lily froze in her tracks. She could have sworn she wasn’t using magic when he’d last gone inside, and the first time she’d asked, they’d both been behind a closed door.

Then her dad laughed, “Just kidding,” He unfurled a bandana he’d had clutched in his hand to use as a blindfold.

On the driveway, Lily and her dad stopped beside the house, shortly before they would have been able to see the backyard. Lily smiled despite herself, maybe her dad’s power was to put people at ease or to always seem like he’d said the right thing.

“You’re sure you’re okay with this,” Lily asked.

“Parents do stupider things for their kids all the time.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Let’s try it.” He tied on his blindfold.

Lily went around the corner to where she could put her feet on bare ground. It seemed sensible to start with what should be the easiest conditions, and immediately she felt the connection to her dad and said, “Ready!”

He walked forward and knew enough to turn left into their backyard. Then he walked slowly but steadily without putting his hands out in front of him or anything. He stumbled on a clump of crabgrass, and Lily felt her stomach turn over. Her dad seemed vulnerable walking blind like that, and Lily wished they weren’t trying this. That wish didn’t seem to have any effect.

Then her Dad was a couple steps from the ladder she’d propped sticking out from the tree.

“STOP!” she thought.

He stopped then turned to his right and started walking again. Lily could feel herself shaking from the near collision, even as she realized her experiment had worked. Now her dad was closing in on the clothesline. Lily thought, “Stop!” and it worked again.

Deciding it was time to try from the paved driveway, Lily took two steps back, and her feet were away from the soil. Her dad was within steps of tripping over a shrub. Lily’s “Stop!” didn’t work this time, but when her dad brushed against it, he adjusted by heading directly toward the circus rig.

“Stop!” It worked without direct soil contact.

He was now headed straight for the tree, and Lily saw him stumble on a root she hadn’t noticed and put his hands out for balance. She thought “Stop,” even though it was a bit late. He recovered and headed right toward the clothesline again. Lily thought, “Stop!” one more time and when her dad stopped and then started right she said out loud. “Let’s quit for now.”

Her dad stopped where he was and pulled off his blindfold. He looked all around as if reconstructing his path.

“Not bad,” he said, “And I see you even moved off the grass. Did you ever try telling me to turn left?”

“Didn’t think of it.”

“Do you want to try again with left and right?”

Lily shook her head. “That’s enough for me for now. Thanks.”

“Well, it seemed to work pretty well. Do you feel good about it?”

Her dad was smiling. Lily didn’t feel like smiling, but she felt some satisfaction at making something work the way she’d expected. “I guess I have mixed feelings,” she said. “But I’m glad you didn’t get hurt.”

He gave her a quick hug. “There’s split pea soup simmering inside if you want it.”

“Thanks.”

Lily went in and got herself a bowl of soup from the kitchen. Then she wandered into the living room to see what her sister was watching on TV.

Rose scowled at her through heavy mascara and eyeliner.

“Am I interrupting?”

Rose crossed her arms and turned back toward the TV.

Unwilling to let her sister’s silent treatment deter her, Lily sat in the middle of the brown sofa, a few feet away from where Rose sprawled across her denim beanbag.

But Rose didn’t stay silent. She said, “I saw that. Anyone could have seen that.”

Lily knew immediately what “that” must mean, but there were no windows facing the backyard from here.

“Did you go to a bedroom window just to spy?”

“It’s not spying to be in my bedroom looking out at my own backyard.”

“Well, if just anyone did it, you’d wonder what they were doing in your room.”

Rose stared at the TV for a bit. An anime video was playing. “I’m glad you can’t do that to me.”

“Trust me, I’m glad too.”

Lily was glad she couldn’t do anything to Rose. She wondered what would happen if she ever had power over someone who upset her that much and that frequently. It added to her list of reasons to keep experimenting and to learn to control what she had.

 

 

 

 

 

8

Meaning Well

Monday, there was a man in an orange vest standing at the railroad crossing when Lily went to school. At lunch, Audrey told her it was part of a “track watch” program. Some group had a theory about suicide hot spots. They thought simply having someone visibly watching would discourage kids from committing suicide at the tracks. Lily didn’t see why someone who wanted to die wouldn’t choose another method or another spot on the tracks, a spot that wasn’t being watched. But it wasn’t her place to argue. She’d pretty much concluded she wouldn’t find Pete there again anyway.

After school Lily biked out to Stanford, thinking the guano she’d collected might be better studied sooner rather than later. She was lucky enough to find Dr. Martin in his office.

“Yes,” he said, looking up from a folder of papers.

“Hi Dr. Martin. I got the guano sample from one of our murrelets, and I thought you might want it today rather than Wednesday.’

He took a moment to reply, “All right then. You can set it there.” He gestured to the far side of his desk.

“Should I label it or something?”

“That’s okay, I’ll do it. Thank you.”

Lily left the office feeling a bit let down. She’d worked hard to get that sample. Then she realized she hadn’t even told Dr. Martin about her new photos. She wasn’t going back to tell him now. It would probably be easier to email them anyway.

But she didn’t feel like asking potentially stupid or embarrassing questions in email. She headed to Kelly’s office instead.

Kelly wasn’t there, but Lily thought she heard her voice down the hall. She walked that way and glimpsed Kelly talking to an older man in a jacket and tie, probably another professor or something.

Lily hung out in the hall waiting for them to finish. When Kelly came out, she did a double take. “Are you waiting for me? It’s still Monday, right?”

Lily chuckled. “I wanted to show you some photos, if you have a minute?”

Kelly glanced at her watch, “Sure, come on down.”

Back in Kelly’s office, Lily brought up her best new picture. “I spent a lot of time with the murrelets this weekend, getting the guano sample for Dr. Martin, and I saw them doing this.”

Kelly squinted at the picture. “Looks like grooming behavior.”

Lily nodded.

“Makes it even more likely our two birds are a couple. Can I upload this to my computer to let us see it better?” Kelly asked.

“Sure, I have a lot more, too. You can copy all the pictures on there if you want. They’re all of murrelets.”

“How much time are you out there?” Kelly asked, as she began to copy the pictures.

“Well, I had to wait a few hours on Sunday to get the sample Dr. Martin wanted.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah. I came out today to give it to him, but he seemed pretty preoccupied.”

“He’s like that, but he’s also very fastidious. He won’t go home tonight until everything is where it should be.”

Lily nodded, not sure what to say to that.

By then, Kelly was flipping through enlarged pictures up on her screen. “Wow. They certainly act like a couple.”

When Lily didn’t reply, Kelly said, “But it’s good. This is better documentation than most ornithologists ever get. Any chance you could bring a better camera with you in the future? These birds must be very comfortable around you.”

“I’ll try.”

“Oh, and I heard from the park ranger, Melody Gianni. I think the idea of getting shirts is great, something bright and easy to read from a distance. Do you think cardinal red with white lettering would be okay?”

“Sure. You’re not upset?”

“No, the ranger was actually quite excited about the murrelets. I did ask her not to tell too many people yet. We don’t want anyone out there pestering them. She understood.”

Lily stood there as Kelly flipped through pictures and talked. “You know, I keep expecting these birds to leave any day. But if they’re actually staying this long, there’s no telling. Why don’t you make the murrelets your main study for this team? You might even get a paper out of it.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I’ll get you library access and you can do your own research and everything. You know you’ll have to have a co-author to get published, right? That’s how it works.”

“Published?”

“No promises, but do you want to try?”

“Sure,” Lily said.

She biked home that day feeling like the whole world had changed around her.

 

It wasn’t until Thursday that she saw Pete. He was walking toward the edge of campus, about to leave for lunch as she and Audrey were sitting down. Lily jogged over with Audrey right behind her, “Hey, Pete, haven’t seen you for a while.”

He stopped and looked at them with his eyes a smidgeon wider than usual. He looked like some haughty male model, and Lily had to admit he was cute. At the same time, she knew he was pissed at her, and whatever stance he’d taken was a worse put down than any middle school girl rolling her eyes could manage. He didn’t say anything.

“Uh, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“No, but it’s none of your business.” With that, he started to walk away.

All the social sense that had let Lily survive from one school to another screamed at her to let him go, but stabbing through her center was how terrible she’d feel if he killed himself and she hadn’t tried. She hurried to catch up. “I don’t want to be a pest. I’m just worried about you, and the art teacher said she hadn’t seen you. Do you have someone you can talk to or whatever?”

He stopped again. She was afraid he’d shout, but instead he whispered. “I quit art, because I don’t feel like drawing anymore. I know you talked to the art teacher, because she sicced the counselor on me. And it still isn’t any of your business. Now leave me alone.”

Lily would have dropped it then, but Audrey said, “She meant well, and Dan didn’t try to kill himself because of your picture. You shouldn’t give up art over this.”

“God, you too? What makes you think you have all the answers?”

When he walked away again, they both let him. Lily’s stomach burnt like it was dissolving itself in acid, but the rest of her body felt strangely tingly right up to her brain. She stood frozen as each fraction of what she felt registered: rejection from someone she’d almost thought of as a friend, relief he’d done it quietly at least, worry that anything bad enough to stop Pete from drawing might be bad enough to kill him, and gratitude that Audrey had stood up for her.

Lily looked at Audrey, frozen beside her, and was about to thank her.

Then Audrey said, “I can’t believe I did that. I told you not to tell anyone. I would never have gone up to Pete like that. Now he hates me, and who knows what he’ll tell his friends.”

“I’m sorry. I appreciated it.”

Audrey glared at Lily and shook her head. “I need to be alone for a while.”

Before Lily could reply, Audrey was gone. Lily stood as if super glued in place.

As more students passed by, heading out to lunch, Lily got her feet moving and walked against the tide, back into the center of campus, where she went to sit where she usually ate with Audrey. Something inside her felt crumpled, but mostly she still felt stuck.

 

Sunday Xavier came out to visit. Lily had invited him for noon knowing that Rose was going to see a friend in a local theatre production. Mom was gone with Rose, so the house was mostly quiet.

Xavier came in the front door and immediately turned toward the kitchen. “Hi, Lily. What’s cooking?”

They wandered into the kitchen where her dad was dipping tortillas into some brownish red sauce, setting them in a casserole dish, and scooping a chicken and cheese mixture inside. He then wrapped them up to form enchiladas.

“Wow, that smells great,” Xavier said to Lily’s father.

“Glad you think so, because it’s what’s for lunch. How’s school?”

“Getting serious, but mostly good.”

Her dad nodded. “Well, I’ll let you and Lily talk while I get these in the oven, and then I’ll be ready to help with her experiment.”

Xavier raised an eyebrow but followed Lily into the living room.

“What’s up?” he asked Lily, as they settled at different ends of the sofa.

“I did an experiment with my dad last Sunday, and it worked. He suggested I not tell you all the details beforehand, but basically, it involves you walking around my backyard blindfolded. There’s some chance you could fall, get bruised, scraped or whatever.”

“I’m game,” he said.

Lily knew he’d want to try anything she came up with. She felt a little weighed down by the responsibility. At the same time, she felt light and tingly from sitting near him and knowing he trusted her more than she trusted herself. He hadn’t even asked what her dad’s role would be. Lily had convinced her dad to stand near Xavier for the first couple obstacles, in case the experiment totally didn’t work. She’d also asked him to intervene if it looked like Lily might be wanting something beyond getting Xavier through the obstacle course. Her dad had said she worried too much, but he’d agreed to do it.

“Now we’re just waiting?” Xavier asked.

“Yeah. So you’re getting more homework?”

“Oh yeah,” he stretched out the words. “How’s your school?”

She told him about having tons of homework and also researching the murrelets. She didn’t mention the scene with Pete or that Audrey had barely spoken to her since.

Her dad came in from the kitchen as Xavier was saying how much he’d love to see the murrelets again.

“I haven’t been taken to see those birds once, although Lily appropriated my camera to photograph them. Shall we go outside?” Her dad headed toward the front door and Xavier and Lily followed.

Around the side of the house, Lily’s dad helped Xavier with the blindfold and Lily went around to stand with her bare feet on the ground. She tried to sense her connection to Xavier and immediately felt herself tugged by both Xavier and her father. The connections scrambled together such that she could barely tell them apart. She tried to focus in the way she did with Wispy and Willow. In a moment, she was able to differentiate the connections and focus on the one that went to Xavier.

Her dad brought Xavier, securely blindfolded, to the edge of the back lawn and said, “Go ahead and walk, Xavier.”

Xavier started walking. He didn’t hold his hands forward and he didn’t walk as slowly as Lily’s dad had. He was headed straight for the wheelbarrow, and Lily’s dad hurried to the opposite side where he’d be able to block a major fall.

Before Xavier reached it, Lily thought, “Stop!” and he hesitated. She thought “Turn Left!” and he turned left and started walking, a little more slowly this time. He was headed toward a bush and Lily noticed her dad wasn’t getting in place on the other side. He wasn’t supposed to quit yet, and she glance to see what was happening. He was walking the other way entirely, toward the tree.

She glanced back and saw Xavier a foot from the bush and thought, “Stop!”

Both her Dad and Xavier stopped. She looked to see if a right turn would be safe for both of them, but by then they were both moving, Xavier to the right and her dad to the left. She thought “Stop!” again, then thought turn right aiming the thought only at Xavier but both of them moved right. She tried thinking “Stop!” just at her dad, but both of them stopped and then turned left without her prompting.

Lily clutched her hands to her head and then said out loud, “Both of you stop for a minute. Dad, can you come here?”

Her dad walked over. His face was calm. He was even smiling a bit, “What’s wrong?”

“Do you know how you ended up on the other side of the yard from Xavier?” Lily asked.

Her dad looked at her with his eyebrows crunched together, as if he was trying to figure out why she was asking. She was tempted to call the whole thing off, but then she saw a solution. “Dad, could you go inside and watch from one of the bedroom windows. You can shout if it looks like anything’s going wrong, okay?”

Her dad didn’t look at all confused by that, and she didn’t feel like she was using any magic to make him agree. “Sure, dear,” he said and went inside.

Once she saw her dad inside at his bedroom window she said, “Okay Xavier, you can turn around and start walking again when you’re ready.”

Lily was able to use “stop” and “turn right” to keep Xavier away from the clothesline. She managed a “turn left” without a stop by the bushes, but it was a close thing. “Turn around” and “go the other way” didn’t work but caused slight hesitations. She even tried a few commands with her feet on the driveway and then with both Xavier and her on the driveway. Finally, she used “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Xavier stopped completely and asked aloud, “Is that enough?”

“Yes,” Lily said, and it came out more forcefully than she’d meant it to.

She was about to tell him that he could remove his blindfold and go back inside when he removed his blindfold and said, “Should we go back inside?”

Lily nodded and raced ahead of him to the door.

Inside, she started breathing hard and her heart was pounding. Her dad came down the hall from his bedroom and said, “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I think I’m freaking out. I feel like I ran a race.”

By this time, Xavier was inside too. “Does freaking out mean it went according to plan or it didn’t?”

Lily started to laugh, and gasp, and finally managed to get out, “Just give me a minute.”

She plopped down in an armchair. Her dad took the other chair, and Xavier took the sofa. They waited quietly, and Lily got her breathing under control. “Would you mind if I start by asking what it seemed like to you?”

Xavier crossed his legs, “Well, it seemed like I simply wandered around with a blindfold on, but I figured I probably couldn’t do that at random without running into things. You were probably doing something to keep me safe.”

He smiled, and it reached all the way to his eyes.

Lily wanted to be that happy, but she couldn’t even fake it. “It didn’t seem creepy at all?”

“Not really.” He shrugged and relaxed into the sofa. “I told you I wanted to do this, right? And I figure if you learn stuff, that’s good for all of us. Learn anything useful?”

“One sec.” She looked at her dad. “Did anything seem strange to you, Dad?”

He smiled, but it was a slightly sad smile. “Nothing seemed strange until I came inside. Then I knew you’d asked why I was going the wrong way because I was supposed to be watching out for Xavier on the other side of the yard. I’m guessing that you told him to turn left, but I started out facing the opposite way and also turned left.”

Hearing her father say it only made it more upsetting to Lily, “I almost ran you into a tree!”

“Lily,” her dad’s voice got quieter just as hers had gotten louder. “I had my eyes open. I don’t think I would actually have walked into a tree. We can try again, and I bet I not only won’t walk into a tree on accident, I bet you can’t make me walk into a tree if I’m trying to prevent it. Would that make you feel better? We could try it right now.”

Lily took a deep breath. “Let’s wait until after lunch. I’m hungry and kind of worn out.”

“Do you think it’s from using magic?” Xavier asked.

“Maybe. It could also be from panicking about magic.”

There was silence for almost a full minute, then Xavier said, “Can you tell us what went right?”

Lily explained every detail. Xavier asked so many questions that it took until the oven timer went off, announcing the enchiladas.

 

After lunch, Xavier watched from Lily’s bedroom window as Lily’s dad first resisted moving at all and then attempted to put away the wheelbarrow without being diverted. He had no problem standing still. There were a couple of missteps with the wheelbarrow that seemed to coincide with when Lily was standing on bare ground and trying to make him stop, but overall her dad was happy with the results.

They went back inside, and Xavier met them in the entryway. “Can I try?”

Lily was tempted to say “no”. She could claim she was too tired, but that wouldn’t be fair. They both needed to know, and Xavier shouldn’t have to go home not getting to test if he could resist her.

Her dad promised to keep watch, and Lily followed Xavier outside.

He stood in the middle of the backyard trying not to move, and she stood on the driveway thinking “Turn left! Turn right! Jump up and down!”

Then she tried all the same things with her feet on the soil and her toes curled down. She could feel the connection between them grow stronger. It was still nowhere near as stable and strong as her connection with the animals at the Faber Tract. It wasn’t even half as strong as what she’d sometimes felt with Makana in Hawaii. But there was a solid tug from her center that seemed to pull her toward Xavier or Xavier toward her. Still, he didn’t move.

After a while he said, “Okay, I’m going to try to move the wheelbarrow back out now.”

She tried to think “Stop! Stop! Stop!” at Xavier. He didn’t even stumble. Lily wasn’t sure if that was his strength resisting her or her own lesser will to make it happen. She couldn’t help wanting to go inside and be done with it all.

Once Xavier had placed the wheelbarrow he said, “Okay, should we go back inside now?”

Lily nodded, knowing that was the logical next step, but still unnerved to hear him say something so close to her own thoughts.

Safely inside Xavier said, “So, are you tired? Are you hungry?”

“Not especially,” Lily said. “Though I wouldn’t mind some ice cream. I was very ready to be done with that.”

Her dad came through and said, “I heard a request for ice cream, spoken aloud and indoors nonetheless. Shall I go ahead and serve it?”

Lily and Xavier ate ice cream in the kitchen. Her dad had disappeared to his room, even though there were still dishes soaking in the sink, and Lily wondered if he was intentionally giving them space.

Xavier told funny Berkeley stories through most of lunch, and Lily was happy to let him talk. He finished with one about a girl who rode a unicycle and wore a glow in the dark bracelet through a piercing in her nose.

Lily stood up and took their bowls to the sink, washed them, and put them in the drying rack.

Xavier said, “Would you be up for a walk now? Your Dad could join us if you want.”

Lily picked up a scrub brush and started poking at the enchilada pan soaking in the sink. Nothing like the threat of going outside with Xavier to make washing dishes seem safe and secure.

“Lily, why are you afraid of this? You still go places with your dad, right? Have you had more problems than you’ve told me?”

“Amazingly few,” she had to admit. “But it’s different. I don’t want much from him that he doesn’t do already, and the things I want I can just say ‘no’ to and wait to discuss back inside.”

“Well you can do that with me. And didn’t I do as well as your dad in that last experiment?”

“You did fine. I’m not worried about what you’d do. It’s embarrassing and could be awkward.” She thought to herself that there was a world of difference between trying to care about a wheelbarrow and trying not to fall for Xavier.

Xavier came over to the sink and took the scrub brush out of her hand. He set it down and handed her a towel.

She dried her hands and felt him watching her. It was almost like the pull she could feel from magic outside, but it didn’t anchor itself in a specific part of her body. She wanted to be close to Xavier. She wanted to feel safe discussing things with him and to trust that they’d still be friends no matter what happened. Surrounding all that was another feeling she was pretty sure she could call lust. It was as strong as it had been a couple weeks ago, but it felt more controlled, or at least more tangled up in her other feelings. She didn’t know if that was bad or good.

Xavier took her hands gently and set down the kitchen towel. “Lily, what are you thinking?”

Her eyes got wet, and then she started to laugh. “I kind of want you to know what I’m thinking, but I don’t know how to say it. I also don’t want you to know by being outside with me and having it affect you.”

He started to reach out to her, “Would it be okay if I gave you a hug, inside, because I wanted to, without you asking?”

Lily nodded, and he held her, and it was like no other hug before.

Lily had only limited experience with crushes. She’d kissed a couple boys on what they’d called “dates” in Seattle. They’d been fairly childish kisses, not real kisses, but she’d liked the brief thrill of it. This hug was almost like a kiss, but warmer and safer and touching more of her body. It wasn’t the kind of hug that got people in trouble at school dances. It was gentle, mostly the top halves of their bodies resting against each other, their arms above each other’s waists. Lily didn’t remember how her arms had gotten around Xavier, but there were tingles up her back and down her arms. Her muscles felt tight and warmly relaxed all at once, and somehow Xavier’s felt the same through his shirt. Her mind was like a deer caught in headlights, dazzled and numb. She had no idea how long it took for her to realize her eyes were closed, to realize she was standing in the kitchen hugging Xavier, which was kind of ridiculous, but she didn’t want to open her eyes or pull away. She didn’t think she’d ever want to pull away.

That thought scared her. What if something like this happened outside? What if she wanted something that was basically okay and that Xavier wanted too, but what if she didn’t have the will to stop it. She wished she had never thought it. She’d enjoyed the hug so much until then, and she didn’t want it to end like that.

She forced herself to pull away. “Let’s go talk, in the living room.”

She wondered where her dad was. He clearly trusted them, but she wondered if he’d appear if they tried to go outside. Was he going to trust her judgment on that too? It was tiring to bear the amount of trust her Dad and Xavier gave her. She sank into a living room chair and Xavier took the nearest sofa end. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin perched on his hands. He seemed to be waiting for her to talk, and then she remembered he’d said something about that before the hug. Again, she wished the hug could have gone on forever.

She didn’t want to talk about that. Instead spoke about magic. “I’ve been trying harder to understand whatever it is that I do. I may be wrong, but my best idea for now is that I’m sort of like a radio. I can transmit what I want, and animals and some humans are open to receiving that signal. I don’t know if maybe I receive signals too. The pull feels like it could be two ways, but I’ve never had an urge to fly away when the birds startled. If anything, the signal or pull seems less clear when the birds or I get distracted or startled.”

“What makes you think it’s like radio?” Xavier asked.

The way he leaned forward and seemed focused on what she was saying made her want to touch him again, not because he was attractive, although as soon as she thought of it, she realized he was and that she felt that too. But she wanted to touch him to feel the connection, to feel through her hand, through her skin, the attention focused on her that she could now only feel in some perceptual or emotional way. It wasn’t entirely different from the magic that she was trying to describe.

She said, “There might have been a time when people knew about electricity but didn’t yet know about magnetism.”

“I think it was the other way around,” Xavier said.

“Whatever.”

Xavier shrugged with a silent smile, and Lily was acutely aware of how comfortable she felt talking to him. “Well maybe there were people who knew about electricity and magnetism but not about radiation. Like the Curies maybe? Didn’t they get sick from radiation while trying to understand it? What if before the Curies, some people believed they knew all the frequencies and invisible signals? They knew about light and radio waves, electricity and magnetism. What if no one believed there was something else, like radiation, because they hadn’t looked for it yet?”

“You think your magic is carried on some higher wavelength?”

“Well, I’m not sure. My science may not be good enough yet, but I think they have charts of the spectrum that includes radio, light and radioactivity. I don’t think magnetism shows up on that. It’s sort of a side thing. Well maybe there are other side things, and we don’t know how to detect them yet.”

“But you do.”

“But I don’t know what I’m detecting. I bet some of the animals know about it too, otherwise they’d probably be more scared when I use it, right? Maybe it's like the sounds dogs hear and humans don’t. I don’t know. That’s just an idea.”

“Don’t put it down.” Xavier released his chin from his cupped hands. “You’re always putting yourself down, but you’re a very thoughtful and together person. You’re more worried about how you might use your magic than either your dad or I are. Maybe you should give yourself a break. Trust yourself as much as I trust you. If we’re wrong, don’t be embarrassed about it. We’ll both have been wrong together, not about you, but about how all this works.”

“But we can’t know how we’ll feel.”

“We can’t know that anyway. No one can. Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Have you even thought about that?” He was sitting up straight now, and there was almost fierceness to his question. “You’ve identified me as possibly having magic. Have you taken any time to think what that could mean? What if it was something that, even accidentally, might destroy your magic? What if it turned out to be like radiation and cause physical damage over time to those around me? What if I turned out to do the same thing you do but only indoors? What if you only like me because of some kind of magic?”

Lily heard him out and wondered why she hadn’t worried about any of it before. It almost seemed like some sort of magic, especially because her body felt totally tingly by the time he finished speaking. What should make her want to avoid him, instead made her want to touch him, to kiss him.

She looked away, to the empty hallway, and took a deep breath.

“I’ll try to think about it, but honestly, I think I do trust you. I’m not sure thinking things through even affects whether I trust you at this point.”

He reached out and took her hand and the touch shot through her body like lightening. It almost hurt.

“No?” he asked, and she realized he must have felt her startle.

“It’s fine,” she sighed then saw his face drop a little, like he thought she didn’t want him to touch her. “It’s good, really.”

Then his whole face changed, and something inside her wanted to pull him close. She was glad they were inside, because she wasn’t sure what would happen if they were outside.

“Should we go for a walk?”

“No way.”

“I think it would be a good test of us both right now.”

“Do you want us to fail?”

He smiled but said, “No, not really. I’d rather we prove we’re both strong enough. We could go out back and promise not to touch each other. You could ask your dad to watch.”

“That would be weird.”

“Please?”

She knew they’d have to find out sometime. Maybe this was the best chance they’d get, although she wondered if he would sincerely resist if he was feeling even half of what she felt.

Xavier let go of her hand, and Lily went down the hall to knock on her father’s door.

He opened it, “Yes?”

“Can you watch me and Xavier in the backyard? If we touch each other, then our experiment is not working.”

“Okay.” Her dad seemed completely calm and fine with it while her insides were boiling.

“And maybe you should try calling us inside from the window rather than coming out,” she added.

He said, “Okay,” again with a more solemn nod, and Lily guessed he was remembering the tree incident just like she was.

Lily went back to Xavier and led him out the back door before she could chicken out. Her tingly feelings had calmed a bit while she was talking with her dad; part of her solely wanted to get this over with. Xavier closed the door behind him, and by some unspoken agreement, they walked side by side, maybe a foot apart, in a circle around the small back yard.

Lily got through one circle without even noticing what she was thinking. Then she thought “Stop!” to see if Xavier would stumble, but he didn’t. She felt the pull between them very clearly after trying. It brought back some of what she’d felt inside when he’d held her hand or even more strongly when he’d held her. She didn’t think that was a safe topic to think about and went to untie the rope obstacle from the earlier experiment.

“Are you trying to distract yourself?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she said, still working on the knot.

He moved to stand in front of her, lowering his face to look straight into her eyes, “Don’t.” He kept looking at her, and she could feel the magical pull between them build even as the emotional pull inside of her grew.

“You want to make this harder?” she asked.

“I want it to be the best test possible.”

She stopped untying the rope. Just looking at Xavier made her want to touch him, to fail the test if it meant he’d kiss her. She decided to take him at his word and let the test be as hard as it could be. She focused on the pull between them the way she did when she called her murrelets. She focused on wanting him, on wanting him to kiss her. Nothing happened, and the longer he stood there with his face close to hers and no sign of giving in to her magic, the more she wanted it and let herself try to make it happen. She thought the word, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss” the same way she’d learned to think, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

It felt like she was doing it right, but Xavier showed no reaction. Maybe he blinked when she shouted with her magic, but people had to blink sometime. She tried to tighten the connection between them, to try to pull him closer, and nothing happened.

Finally, she wanted to be done. She wanted to go inside. She tried thinking at him “Left!” to send him back toward the house or simply “Let’s go inside!”

After nothing happened for quite a while he said, “Maybe we should go in now.”

She didn’t know if she’d influenced him at all. She kind of doubted it based on how long it had taken, and she gratefully turned toward the house. Xavier followed behind her, where she couldn’t see him, and she wondered if that was on purpose.

Inside, she sat down at the opposite end of the couch from where Xavier had sat before. He sat in the nearest chair, to her right, and she realized she’d been hoping he’d sit beside her, maybe hold her hand now that they were back inside. The desires she’d been letting herself ride while outside waned with disappointment. Then she noticed how carefully Xavier sat down, how he took deep controlled breaths. She wondered if she’d affected him in ways he didn’t care to make too obvious, and she felt a little excited at the possibility. Then she realized that was freaky if she’d affected how he felt by magic. If he didn’t like her that way to begin with, how would she ever know what was real and what was magic? She had no idea what to say.

Xavier finally spoke, “Did you try to influence me out there?”

“Yes.”

“Did you try as hard as you could and for what you truly wanted?”

“I think so?” She couldn’t help saying it as a question. Despite all the talk about trust beforehand, she worried how Xavier would feel if he’d sensed all she’d wanted but just been strong enough to resist it.

“Good,” he sounded relieved. “Then that’s a successful experiment, right? Nothing happened. Right?” He sounded less relieved.

“I guess. Couldn’t you tell at all?”

Xavier twitched his legs a fraction of an inch. Lily wondered if he was even aware of it. He looked at her in the direct way that made her realize he hadn’t truly been looking at her before. “I might like to believe that what I thought and felt out there was somewhat beyond my own doing, but to be fair, I sort of set it up so that we both started with about the same desires.”

“Set it up?” Lily suddenly had the sick feeling that everything from the hug onward had been an experiment that Xavier was running. She wanted to throw up.

“Well, yes. But don’t be upset. We needed to know. After that, wouldn’t you feel safer going for a walk with me?”

Lily knew she was about to burst into tears, and not just a few little ones trickling down the side of her cheek. She got up and turned toward the hallway. She wanted to say she’d be back in a minute, but she didn’t trust her voice, and she wasn’t sure she’d come back.

By the time Lily shut her bedroom door behind her, her cheeks were wet. She didn’t dare breathe until she’d buried her face in her pillow. Then she cried as hard as she’d cried in her life, but she tried to do it as quietly as she could.

It must have been several minutes later when she heard a knock at her door. She didn’t answer, but then her dad’s voice said, “Lily?”

She managed to say, “Yes?”

“Can I come in?”

“No, please.”

There was a pause, then she heard, “Okay. Lily, Xavier feels bad about whatever happened. Do you think you can come out and talk to him before your mother and sister come home?”

“Do I have to?”

“I think you should, but if you’re not going to, at least let us know.”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

Lily went to her dresser, blew her nose, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red. Her cheeks were splotchy. She didn’t want Xavier or anyone else to see her like this. Then again, she realized he probably didn’t care. He’d played on the feelings she’d admitted to having for him just to test the magic. Feelings like this probably weren’t a big deal to him, and they probably shouldn’t be so upsetting to her. She didn’t doubt that he’d led her on with good intentions or that he considered it a valid experiment, but she was angry. It hurt to think the hug that had meant so much to her had only been part of an experiment. It hurt to know Xavier didn’t feel as much for her as she did for him or that he’d play with it like a game. And whatever Xavier thought, it was embarrassing for him to know what she wanted if he didn’t want it as much himself.

Lily started to cry again and realized she had to pull herself together rather than dwelling on thoughts that upset her. She stepped across to the bathroom, washed her face, and blotted it dry. That made her more uniformly red, which she told herself was better than the splotchy look after crying.

She went to the living room where her dad and Xavier sat discussing carrying bicycles on public transportation. They both went silent as she entered.

“Hey, kiddo,” her dad said. “I have some cleaning to do in the kitchen, unless you’d rather I go back to my room.”

“Go ahead and clean,” she said. “Or I can do it later if you want.”

“That’s okay,” her dad said, and he patted her shoulder on the way out. She sat down where she’d been before, on the sofa to Xavier’s left.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I know. I’m probably just worn out and emotional.”

“We did do a lot today. Does it make you tired?”

Lily shrugged. There was a long silence.

“Well, I should probably be going.”

Lily nodded.

“Should I come next weekend?”

“I don’t know. Send me email, and we can see how much homework we have.”

He nodded and looked like he might reach out to her, but he didn’t. She followed him to the front door, and her dad joined them to say goodbye.

 

That night while Lily slept, someone climbed in bed beside her. Somehow she knew it was Xavier even as she knew it was impossible and had to be a dream. She ran her hand along his arm and back, feeling the muscles tight and ready, even as his shoulder and elbow seemed to curve in a relaxed way, wrapping his arm around her. She felt the tingling warmth spread through her from his touch. She felt her arms pull him closer. It felt as amazing as the hug earlier that day, the hug fully clothed in the kitchen. Except now they were in her bed. She realized they were naked, and this was like nothing she’d ever done before. It felt like the hug from earlier had grown to include her whole body.

She woke up and saw the clock said 2:05. She felt electric, as if every hair on her body was standing on end. Then she remembered what she’s been dreaming. She remembered that the hug earlier had been part of an experiment and that it didn’t mean to Xavier what it meant to her. She couldn’t believe she’d turned it into a dream like that. If only it hadn’t been about someone who didn’t want her. Why did she have to dream about something she didn’t even want to think about wanting from him? It made her angry. It could have been a pleasant enough dream under other circumstances. Instead, she lay awake a long time wondering if she could still talk to Xavier and be friends the way she’d hoped, even after what had happened the previous day and what her betraying mind had made her dream tonight.

 

School on Monday seemed distant, as if a very thin white curtain separated her from everything else. The parent watching the railroad tracks seemed like a ghost in an orange vest. The breezeway leading to Lily’s locker felt less familiar, like it had collected a layer of dust or faded over the weekend. The students pushing by her acted like extras out of a movie, and in an embarrassing flash of self-awareness, Lily realized she found a lot of them attractive. A guy with cargo pants and an admittedly nice butt walked by, and Lily’s stomach flipped over, sending a wave of warmth all the way out to her arms and legs. The cleavage of the girl with a lower locker near hers caught her eye. Of course, the girl was wearing a scoop necked red tee that was designed to make people look, but Lily didn’t usually have trouble looking away from things like that.

All of her morning classes proceeded the same way. Lily kept noticing the parts on display and the amazingly attractive ways many of her classmates chose to show off their bodies. It was as if her awareness had been super-charged. What she saw made her tingle or made her stomach feel empty or quivery. Luckily, no one around her seemed to notice her looking for too long. No one seemed to notice her at all, which was a relief, but it added to the sense of separateness, of seeing everything through a haze or a filter of some kind.

It wasn’t that Lily had never had these feelings before. She’d figured she was a pretty normal teenager as far as noticing cute guys or sometimes girls. She didn’t think she was particularly hung up on what people looked like, but she was honest enough with herself to admit she noticed and appreciated sometimes. Today’s feelings made her think she’d been completely naïve before. She’d heard jokes about guys who thought about sex every thirty seconds, and she wondered if this was what some people felt like all the time, what launched such jokes. It wasn’t a bad feeling, and once she settled into doing a math problem or reading a social studies assignment, she escaped the distractions for a short while. But seeing almost any other person was enough to make her whole body attentive again. The feeling itself was pleasant, kind of exciting and fun, but feeling it randomly at everyone was a little unnerving.

At lunch, she was relieved to find Audrey eating on the usual bench. It felt ordinary and reassuring as she sat down with her own brown bag.

“Hi, Audrey. What did you think of the chemistry write up this weekend?”

“Not much.”

Usually Audrey answered in detail, so Lily knew the incident with Pete hadn’t been forgotten. Still, she was glad Audrey had shown up for lunch. But then she couldn’t help but notice the curve of Audrey’s figure, even though Audrey was wearing a high necked tee shirt that wouldn’t count as particularly tight or seductive by high school standards. Lily’s arms tingled and her center felt warm. The feelings made her want to scream, not because she minded being attracted to Audrey, but because she didn’t want to feel it now, while she knew Audrey was still annoyed. Lily forced herself to look at the sandwich and apple she removed from her lunch bag.

“What did you write for future research ideas?” Lily asked as she inspected her sandwich.

“I didn’t come up with anything great.”

“I suggested taking more frequent measurements and studying a higher temperature range, maybe mounting the thermometer differently. Do you think that’s enough?”

Audrey shrugged.

Lily took a bite of her sandwich and stared at the building across from them.

When Audrey pulled some cookies out of her lunch bag, her arm brushed across Lily’s, sending a flood of sensation through Lily’s body. It reminded her of Xavier’s hug and her weird dream the night before. She knew on some level that what had happened with Xavier must have triggered her strange feelings today, but she hadn’t quite made sense of it yet. A sudden urge to talk to Audrey about it almost overwhelmed her, but there were too many parts she definitely didn’t want to discuss. And Audrey wouldn’t want to hear about Xavier right now anyway.

Lily wondered if Audrey would ever want to talk with her again, but she’d shown up for lunch. To Lily that implied there must be some way to make things better.

“I’m sorry about what happened with Pete,” Lily offered.

Audrey replied with, “I saw some of the pictures you took of the murrelets and heard that Kelly gave you special research access to write a paper. You must be spending a lot of time on that.”

“I haven’t even started yet.”

Audrey looked away, but turned back. “Don’t let it frighten you. People like Kelly will go out of their way to help you with a project, even if you don’t think you know enough to do it. Trust me, you don’t want to waste a chance like that by procrastinating.”

Audrey’s words made Lily feel warm and cold at once. “Kelly should have picked you to write a paper. You're more prepared for it.”

Audrey looked Lily full in the face and gave a slight nod. “That would have been nice, but you do have a thing with those birds, and I’ve got a lot of other projects going on. I’ll try not to be too jealous.”

Lily realized Audrey truly was jealous about the paper. Maybe that was a bigger deal to her than the confrontation with Pete. Or maybe Audrey had been stewing over both all weekend. At least they were talking now.

The day’s unusual feelings of attraction drifted into a desire to please Audrey, to live up to her expectations and maintain their friendship. That inclination lingered all the way through lunch. Lily got comfortable with it and kind of enjoyed how it made everything Audrey said a bit more interesting and memorable. She found herself asking Audrey about her other projects, and Audrey talked about playing violin and entering poetry contests, both of which she saw as sidelines for her intended future career in environmental science. Audrey became a fully colored storybook character in Lily’s mind.

Lily knew enough to realize she was developing a bit of a crush on Audrey now, but she also knew it started with feelings stirred up by Xavier. Even if he didn’t care how she felt, she was determined not to confuse one set of feeling for another, at least not too much.

By the end of the day, she felt pretty good. She biked home appreciating the backsides of bicyclists in front of her and the way she’d made up with Audrey.

Later that afternoon, she checked her email and found a short message from Xavier:

Can’t stop thinking about yesterday. I’m sorry if some of it was hard on you, but let me know what works for next weekend. –X

It made her cry. Lily didn’t fully know why, probably because Xavier couldn’t know how much his hug had affected her or how much it hurt that he hadn’t meant it. She was still a little upset that he’d triggered that dream that set her in such a weird frame of mind all day. If he’d been feeling it all too, that would be different. The whole thing would have seemed dramatic and romantic; she would have been falling in love. Instead, she felt stupid and was very afraid of being outside with Xavier, even for a controlled experiment with magic. Never having expected the sort of dream she’d had the night before, it made her worry she didn’t know her own mind nearly as well as she wanted to.

She didn’t reply to Xavier’s message. She didn’t reply all week. Instead she buried herself in homework and in researching murrelets. Twice more during the week she had weird dreams about Xavier. They weren’t as intense as the first one. They didn’t carry over into the day as much. She still felt a little bit of a crush toward Audrey, but it mostly felt nice and made seeing her at lunch more fun. Audrey didn’t seem to notice, which was good, because Lily was sure her feelings were more tied up with Xavier than Audrey.

 

At Friday’s team meeting, Lily found Audrey’s part of the research more interesting than she had before. She listened when Audrey spoke about plants and about how water diverted through the levee might affect growth patterns. Max’s report about work to lower a section of the levee and how he’d modeled the water diversion didn’t seem nearly as interesting. Lily figured it was largely her increased interest in Audrey that made the difference.

Afterward, Lily wanted to ask Audrey over for dinner or to study together, but she chickened out. She knew she was focusing more on Audrey because she was annoyed with Xavier, and while that might help build her friendship to some extent, she didn’t want to build too much on false feelings. It seemed too much like what Xavier had done to her.

When she arrived home, she had a new email from Xavier, saying:

Is everything okay there? Do you want to get together this weekend? If so, when and where?

She emailed Xavier saying she was sorry, but she had too much work to do and couldn’t spend time with him that weekend.

That night, she woke again, shortly after 2 AM. She felt like she was burning up and she threw back her covers and felt cool air chill her sweaty body. She moved her pillow, feeling how damp it was where she’d been lying. She remembered enough of her dream to know that it had been about Xavier again and that it involved that intense hug all over her body and being in bed together. Part of her wished she’d stop dreaming about Xavier so things could get back to normal. But she had to admit she liked the way she felt now and could easily fall back asleep.

 

That weekend she typed up four pages comparing her murrelets to other populations that had been studied. She brought the papers to Kelly on Wednesday, and Friday Kelly returned them with notes and a couple of print outs on still more researcher’s work. Together, they wrote an outline for the rest of the paper and agreed that Lily would try to get another guano sample or feather if the opportunity presented.

Lily researched and wrote all weekend, avoiding Xavier once again. She didn’t go out of her way to get more samples. Being too successful might be suspicious, and she didn’t have much time to spend with the birds anyway. She went Tuesday to see if they were okay. Kelly kept the team at Stanford entering data into spreadsheets on Wednesday. Thursday Lily was up until two o’clock studying, and she barely even thought about the murrelets.

Friday the whole wetlands team gathered in the snack room for a meeting. Max, Audrey, and Lily arrived first. Kelly appeared right on time and brought muffins. Some had raisins and some had crumble on the top. They were pleasantly sweet, even if they didn’t smell or taste like much. Lily was holding her hand beneath her chin to catch crumbs from her half-finished muffin when Dr. Martin walked in with his laptop and a binder cradled in his arms.

He smiled at Lily and said, “I’m sorry to keep people waiting, but I received some exciting news.”

As Dr. Martin sat down Kelly said, “No problem. Why don’t you begin?”

“A colleague in Michigan, Dr. Lebowski, has partially analyzed the feather Lily found. She says their lab was able to extract and amplify DNA to test against known markers. They’re not sure if we’re even dealing with ancient murrelets. We might have an individual, a male, descended from two different sub-species, an unknown population, or a new sub-species or species. The stool sample showed an unusual diet as well, very high on shrimp and, not surprising, low on salt water fish. Dr. Lebowski mentioned coming out to see for herself if the birds stay a little longer.”

Lily had seen papers Lebowski had co-authored about the ancient murrelets in British Columbia. She was silent for a moment realizing that her feather had made its way to one of the people she’d regarded as an expert in the field. “She’s coming here?”

“She’d like to. She’s an expert on murrelets.”

“I think I’ve read some of her papers,” Lily said.

“I’d like to talk with her,” Kelly said. “This could be a real benefit to the project.” Then she turned to Lily, “Do you have a good draft of your paper that I could share, Lily? Or do you need another week?”

Lily hadn’t gotten nearly as much feedback on her last draft as she’d hoped. She couldn’t imagine someone like Dr. Lebowski seeing her work so far. “I’ll get something better together by next week. Could I get copies of the new DNA and diet information?”

Kelly smiled and the rest of the meeting continued with the raised voices and optimism of a celebration. Lily noticed Audrey wasn’t saying much. Lily felt guilty despite all her hard work and the exciting possibilities. She hurried out afterward, but Audrey and her bike were already gone by the time Lily left the building.

Lily threw herself into more research for the next full week, including both weekends. All she did was schoolwork, her paper, lunch with Audrey, and visiting the murrelets. She had never worked so hard in her life and was surprised by how much she enjoyed it. Life was much easier without magic, or Xavier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

9

Struggle

At lunch the next Monday Audrey asked, “Did you finish your murrelet paper?”

Lily was surprised. She’d thought they were avoiding the subject. “Not completely, but I sent what I could.”

“How many hours a week are you working on it?” Audrey was picking at her sandwich and not meeting Lily’s eyes.

“Yesterday I spent at least six hours on that, but before it might have been six hours for the whole week.”

Audrey wrinkled her nose, either reacting to her picked apart sandwich or to Lily’s answer, it wasn’t clear.

Lily hoped Kelly’s reaction would be better.

 

On Wednesday Kelly called Lily into her office. She was smiling, but the wrinkles around her mouth and nose reminded Lily of Audrey’s ambiguous reaction.

“You didn’t like my paper, did you?” Lily asked.

“No, it was fine.” Kelly nodded as she said it. “I added several post-it notes with ideas you might want to follow up.” She handed Lily a printed version of her paper, and Lily could see the orange notes preventing pages from lying flat.

Then Kelly handed her two more papers. “I also found a couple of other papers published about new populations or subspecies of other birds. I thought you might want to see how they were written and what they covered. I know it’s asking a lot, but I’d like you to spend your time here and maybe some time this evening working on this. I could wait until tomorrow or Friday to send an improved draft to Lebowski.

Lily heard the message: _What you wrote isn’t good enough to send._ She nodded and took the papers with her to the snack room where she and Audrey usually worked when they were on campus.

Audrey looked up from her laptop as Lily entered, “That bad?”

“I need to read these,” Lily held up the new papers, “And rewrite this,” Lily help up her own post it filled paper, “By Friday.”

“And we have a chemistry test,” Audrey added with what might be a sympathetic roll of her eyes.

Then Audrey went back to whatever she was entering on her laptop. Lily sat down and began to read.

That night Lily finished her regular homework around ten and then spent two hours trying to adjust her murrelet paper. She used the database access Kelly had gotten her, but it still wasn’t enough for even half the questions requiring data. And Lily didn’t know what to do with comments like “explain more” or “clarify”.

That night she had another passionate dream about Xavier. She opened her eyes afterward. It was almost two thirty this time. Tears filled Lily’s eyes. Her body felt warm and tingly, but beneath it she felt like a washcloth that had been wrung out. She was exhausted and fell back asleep with salty tears still trickling down.

 

The next day Lily’s eyes felt sandy, even after she’d taken her shower and biked to school. Her classrooms seemed hazy. She was still sort of turned on from her latest dream, but mostly she was tired and wished she could have stayed home in bed.

At lunch she tried to study chemistry with Audrey, but her brain refused to hold onto even the easier parts.

“What’s wrong?” Audrey asked.

Lily shrugged.

Audrey took her shoulders and lightly shook her. It was playful, but the physical touch and surprise brought Lily back into focus. There was still a bit of charge when Audrey touched her, especially on days like today.

“Sorry. I guess I’m kind of tired.” Lily pulled back and sat up straighter.

“You were up late working on the murrelet paper?”

“Yeah.”

“And you haven’t studied for chemistry at all?”

“I did the homework.”

Audrey stared at her with lowered eyebrows as if she’d admitted to sleeping on the job. Then her friend’s whole posture changed. Her eyebrows relaxed and her shoulders softened.

“I’ll tell you what. Come to my house at eight tonight, and we’ll review together.”

Lily didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not, but Audrey seemed sure.

Then Audrey pulled out her phone and started texting. “I sent you the address. Bring whatever notes or flashcards you have, at eight.”

 

Lily’s dad drove her over that night, because it was already dark and he hadn’t met Audrey’s family. The house wasn’t huge, but the yard looked like something out of a magazine. There weren’t any roses or delicate flowers. In fact, there weren’t many flowers at all. But the yard was landscaped with ridges and shelves of different colors and textures fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Plants with big brown tufts shot up beyond scrubby bushes with yellow and jade striped leaves. There were spreading broad leaves that could have cohabited with dinosaurs over small furry plants Lily thought were called donkey’s ears. Low spotlights lit a slate walkway and highlighted special plants or areas in the yard. Lily knew Audrey's environmentalism well enough to notice the miniature solar panel attached to each light. She guessed that the plants were all low water natives as well.

Then her dad rang the bell, and Audrey answered, dressed in her usual jeans and long sleeve tee from school. Lily heard the tapping of heels and expected Audrey’s mom to appear in a skirt or other dark office clothing like Lily’s mom wore.

Instead, Audrey’s mom wore red Capri length pants with large white orchids printed on them. It was the sort of thing her friends in Hawaii would laugh at the tourists for wearing. But Audrey’s mom pulled it off with high heels and a tight white sweater.

Audrey made polite introductions and then physically dragged Lily away as their parents made small talk in the doorway.

Inside, the house was as carefully arranged as the yard. Lily caught sight of embroidered cushions, painted flower pots, and glass display shelves as Audrey dragged her back to her room.

Audrey’s room was at the end of the hall and was about twice the size of Lily’s. All the furniture was white painted wood. The bedspread, chair cushions, and window seat were all embroidered in shades of purple, and the walls were filled with framed artwork and photos that chronicled Audrey’s childhood. But Audrey didn’t waste any time. She sat Lily down at one desk, a computer desk, and sat herself at another, a desk with a roll down top, currently rolled up. “Do you want to quiz me, or should I quiz you?”

“Uh,” Lily pulled out her notes, “Either way.”

Audrey glanced at the notes in Lily’s hand and said, “Go ahead then, ask me something.”

Lily looked down, “What is the nitrate ion?”

“N, O, 3, minus.”

“Right. What’s the formula for magnesium permanganate?”

“Mg, open parentheses, Mn, 0, 4, close parentheses, 2.” Then Audrey cut her off before she could ask another. “Why don’t you quiz me on some longer answers. Those tend to be the hard ones. You can look at the questions on the bottom of my notes or ask me something you think might be on the test.”

Audrey handed Lily her binder. Each page of notes had a vertical line on the left with individual words written beside it. There was a horizontal line a couple inches from the bottom with questions written below it. Lily read a question marked by a green asterisk, “What is the Rutherford Nuclear Atom model?”

As Audrey answered, Lily realized the relevant portion was underlined in red on the notes above. Lily flipped through pages amazed at the organization and color coding in the notes. “This is great,” Lily said, “but you seem to know it all.”

“Well, I have a stack of flash cards I’m still studying.” Audrey tapped a small stack of maybe a dozen cards. A much larger stack sat behind it, and Lily assumed those were the ones Audrey already felt she knew. “I’m sure there will be at least a couple questions I didn’t predict. And it’s easy to mess up on the math with calculating grams produced or percent yield or whatever.”

Lily liked that part and thought the math would be the least of her worries. “Can I look at your flashcards?”

When Lily left at ten she had the set of cards Audrey didn’t need any more. Audrey had been very nice about it, but it was clear she worried about letting someone else take them out of the house. Audrey had said very clearly that she’d want them back to study for the midterm and final. For now, it was clear she felt sorry for Lily, and Lily was more than a little worried that she was going to fail the test.

She studied until midnight, when her brain was swimming. Then she fell asleep with chemical formulas filling her head, but nonetheless, she woke at two. Her heart was pumping and she could feel Xavier as if he’d just left her bed. She was as exhausted as the night before, but no tears came to her eyes this time. Instead, she felt calm and secure, like she’d been rescued from some bad dream she couldn’t remember. She figured it had probably been about chemistry, but she shied away from the thought and let herself fall into a more restful sleep.

 

The next day Lily felt a little spacey, but she wasn’t as exhausted or distracted as she’d been the day before. She reviewed Audrey’s flashcards between classes and even during a slow part of social studies. She came away from the chemistry test feeling that she probably hadn’t failed.

At lunch, Audrey asked, “What did you think?’

“I’m glad you helped me study, but I still missed at least ten percent. And you?”

Audrey shrugged with a sort of half frown. “I think I did okay. But as I said, stupid mistakes in the math might still get me.”

“Would it be okay if I kept your flashcards through the weekend? I thought I should make my own set for the midterm and final.”

“They’re just based on the chapter reviews and class notes.”

“You seem to be pretty good at knowing what to study.”

“Lots of practice,” Audrey said. Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out the small set of flashcards she’d kept for herself. “Here, you can copy these too, if you want.”

“Thanks.”

Audrey smiled and it softened her face. “Are you ready to hand in your murrelet paper?”

Lily looked again to see if Audrey truly wanted to hear about this or was just being polite. Audrey's gaze was steadily, almost the way Kelly focused in sometimes. “I did some stuff on Wednesday with a bit more research. But I didn’t finish, and I don’t know how to improve the writing stuff.”

“Do you have a writing tutor?”

“No,” Lily laughed.

Audrey didn’t laugh back. “Lots of people here do. I mean, the teachers see over a hundred students each day. They don’t have time to give much feedback. But there are lots of tutors or readers at Stanford or the test prep center.”

Lily wondered how expensive a tutor would be but didn’t want to ask.

“Do you know someone?”

“Last year I did, but she went on to grad school. I can get a recommendation for you. Or what about that college guy you like? How’s his writing?”

Lily had avoided telling Audrey much about Xavier since she’d gotten upset over the magic experiment and started having such intense dreams. Now that she had a specific question to answer, Lily realized she had no idea about Xavier’s academic or writing abilities.

“But I’m supposed to give her a new draft today.”

“You could call and ask to work on it at home today and email it later. Didn’t you send it in at midnight last time?”

It was a solution Lily hadn’t thought of, and she admired it almost as much as Audrey’s organized, color-coded science notes. She pulled out her phone, knowing she’d get too nervous if she waited until later. Within two minutes, she had permission to skip field work that afternoon, although Kelly said she’d like a draft of the paper by nine if possible.

 

She came home to an email from Xavier saying:

There’s a trade show with palmistry and aura readers on campus this weekend, if you want to check anything out there. It’s indoors but you could watch people come and go through the outside door. Your whole family could visit if you’d rather. Or I can come to Palo Alto. Your paper’s done, right? – X

Lily was going to reply that she had too much homework, needed to copy chemistry flashcards, and might have extra wetlands work on Sunday, but the pull inside her that wasn’t magic kept her sitting there staring at the screen. She was curious about the magic convention, but she had mixed feelings about Xavier. Part of her wanted to see him very badly, as if it still hoped something wonderful and romantic would happen. Another part wanted to put off the sort of conversation she knew they’d end up having, at least about magic and her reluctance to do more experiments with Xavier. Moreover, the dreams this week had been so intense that she thought she had to resolve them one way or another, and maybe seeing Xavier would set things back in perspective.

Lily forced the issue to the back of her mind and dove into work on her paper until her dad called everyone to dinner at six thirty.

 

Mom arrived home and was still dressed for the office. She sat across from Lily and asked, “How was your wetlands work today.”

“Kelly let me come home to work on my paper instead, but I need to send a new draft by nine.”

“Another draft?” her mom asked, eyebrows high.

“She’s sending it to someone who publishes papers on these birds, and besides, my writing isn’t that good compared to other people here. Did you know a lot of kids have writing tutors?”

“I thought your writing teacher like you,” Dad said, taking a biscuit.

“She does, but I’m only getting a ‘B.’”

“Most people don’t get tutors because of a ‘B,’” her mom said, taking her own biscuit.

“Here they do,” Rose answered. “But only if you hang out with geeks, like Lily.”

“Rose!” her mom said. Then she faced Lily again, “Why don’t you try the peer tutoring program at school first. Then if you think we should hire someone, I’m willing to look into it. We’ll support you in whatever you want to do.”

“Great!” said Rose. “How about supporting me in a candle light vigil?”

“For what?” Mom asked.

“We’re trying to save the voluntary transfer program.”

“The what?”

“The program that lets East Palo Alto kids attend Palo Alto schools. It started with some lawsuit about segregation a long time ago, but now people are trying to get rid of it through some legal stuff.”

Mom and Dad both nodded. “Who’s organizing this?”

“Some kids at my school.”

“Really,” dad tilted his head.

Lily came back with her own very sarcastic, “Really. They’ve got a permit from the city to stand in front of City Hall on Sunday night. I think a bunch of Girl Scouts are organizing it, but they’re kind of cool Girl Scouts. They’re in my anime club.”

A long discussion followed about Rose’s candlelight vigil and various clubs at her school before dad asked Lily, “Will we be seeing Xavier this weekend?”

Lily wished she had already said “no” in email. “I have tons of homework to catch up on once I finish the Murrelet paper. I think I’ll tell him to wait another week.”

Her dad took another bite of mashed potatoes then said, “Is everything okay between you two?”

Rose looked between Lily and her dad curiously, but didn’t interrupt. Her mom kept eating as if it were the most natural question in the world.

Lily said, “We’re fine,” but she wasn’t sure her dad or anyone else believed her.

She half expected him to question her further but he let it slide until after dinner. As they finished, her dad said, “Lily, would you care to take a walk with me?”

Lily’s dinner suddenly felt like stones in her stomach, but she knew he wouldn’t give up either way. “Can it wait ‘til nine? I have to finish my paper.”

“Okay,” Dad replied with a sneaky little smile.

Rose, who had been surprisingly quiet since Xavier was first mentioned planted her feet and looked first at Lily, then at their Dad. “This is ridiculous. You’re going to talk about magic, aren’t you? You’re trying to leave me out of everything again.”

Their mom said, “Rose, let them have some time to talk. You and I could make dessert if you want.”

“No, I’m not a little baby, and I won’t be distracted by offers to make dessert.”

Dad took a deep breath and walked over to Rose. He put a hand on her shoulder and looked her square in the face. “You’re right. You’re not a baby, and I will tell you the truth. I want to talk to Lily about a young man. I have already had a couple of such talks with you, and I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted Lily around for those, would you?”

Rose actually blushed. Lily took the opportunity to escape back to her paper.

But from down the hall she heard Rose say to her mom, “What sort of dessert were you thinking of?”

At nine, she sent the draft she had, not thinking it was good enough, but relieved to have an end to it, at least for this weekend.

As she met her dad by the door, he handed her a paper towel full of cookies. “Very clever of you to delay the walk until after Rose made dessert.”

Lily smiled despite herself as she ate a peanut butter cookie and let her dad usher her through the door.

Outside they walked briskly to the first corner and Lily asked, “What sort of talks have you had with Rose about young men?”

Her dad gave her a brief sideways hug, and she was please when he said, “That would definitely not be a fair thing for me to answer. Now why don’t you tell me whatever you think is fair about what’s happening with you and Xavier.”

Lily immediately thought about her dreams, and decided she wasn’t mentioning those to her father. She was glad he didn’t have the power to make her say or do what he wanted, even accidentally. That made her wonder if he'd kept himself from telling something about Rose or if her worries kept her magic in check somehow. She knew he’d feel bad about saying anything, and Rose would be pissed. Hopefully, such slips were less likely to happen now that they understood more and had practiced with their experiments.

Thinking about the experiments made Lily check to see if she could feel the link to her dad. In the moment of wondering she felt it, which seemed mostly good overall. She decided to start there.

“I think I’m starting to feel more comfortable with my magic.”

Her dad waited for her to say more, but eventually said, “Rose would be thrilled and annoyed to have her suspicions confirmed. Are you mentioning magic because it relates to whatever is bothering you or to avoid talking about Xavier?”

“Both.”

She grabbed her dad’s hand, and he gave hers a quick squeeze before they let go.

They came to a corner where they could either walk toward the bay or toward a neighborhood park. Even though Lily felt pretty confident about controlling her magic around her dad, she steered them toward the park, assuming the magic had to be less strong there than in the local wetlands.

“You're going to make me work for every word of this, aren't you?” her dad asked. “I won’t insist you tell me anything if you don’t want to, but you’ve been closed up tight the last few weeks, and I think it’s something to do with Xavier.”

Lily took a deep breath, raising her shoulders and then pushing them down. “Yeah. I think I had a bit of a crush on him, and he didn’t feel the same, and the magic makes it that much more awkward.”

Her dad nodded and thought for the length of a block. There was a higher level of traffic on the relatively major street. It wasn’t a good block for talking anyway. As they turned onto a quieter road where magnolia leaves where beginning to fall he said, “I’m sure Xavier can’t feel exactly the same as you, but are you sure you know how he feels?”

“He’s pretty much told me he doesn’t think we should be involved. He seems to think the only reason for kissing me is to prevent me from worrying about magicking him into doing it, and the one time he hugged me it turned out to be a set up for another experiment.”

“What sort of an experiment?”

“That last one that you watched in the backyard.”

“I wondered what that was about. Were you trying to magic him into kissing you?”

“Well, at first I was trying hard not to. Then he sort of told me to try something he could try to resist, and I think I made a pretty sincere effort then.”

“Did you think it was a good test?”

“Maybe. I don’t know what would happen if one of us wasn’t consciously resisting all the time.”

“Is that why you’re avoiding him?”

“At least partly.”

“Do you think you could make him kiss you if he truly didn’t want to?”

“Maybe.”

“Has something like that happened with anyone else here?”

“No. Dad, you and Xavier are the only magic-glowy-whatever”—Lily felt herself walking faster and getting frustrated—“He’s the only person my age I know about here who glows.”

“He’s three years older than you.”

“Two and a half, but I know what you mean.” Lily watched her feet kick fallen magnolia leaves.

“I’m sorry. I think I’m interrupting too much. Why don’t you continue explaining what’s bothering you?”

There were other people walking toward them, an older couple with two dogs. Lily waited until they’d passed to say, “Maybe I don’t have time for Xavier right now. I have a lot of homework and lots of research and writing to do for the murrelet project.”

Her dad waited, and Lily knew he was waiting. She also knew that on some level she desperately wanted to see Xavier again. Even if he wasn’t as interested in her as she was in him, she didn’t want to give him up as a friend. Maybe her feelings were biasing her, but her conversations with him seemed to help her think things through. He always seemed to be interested in whatever they were talking about and in how she saw things and understood them. He seemed to mean well and care about her, and she knew it was a little unfair to let the fact she wanted more interfere with what they had. Besides, she was his only lead to figuring out whatever magic he might have.

As they turned toward home, her dad said, “Is there anything else I should be asking you?”

Lily wondered if that was his subtle way of asking if she might have used magic to influence the conversation. Then she thought she was being paranoid, but she said, “I’m not as worried about my magic affecting you as I was before the experiments. I mean, there’s still the whole thing about not wanting any of the ramifications that might follow, but also, I think I’m better able to tell when I might be thinking something that way.”

“But you’re still worried about being outside with Xavier?”

“I guess with you I think any mistakes would be okay to correct. I mean, if I realized I might be using magic, I could just tell you.”

There was a long pause and Lily decided to go on rather than making her father ask, “I think I’d be embarrassed if I thought I’d made Xavier kiss me or something. It wouldn’t work to just admit it or take it back.”

“Don’t you think Xavier would take some responsibility? If your experiment before was fair, then he can resist if he wants to.”

“But I don’t know if he can keep that up all the time.”

“You expect yourself to keep control all the time for both of you?”

“Do you want me to make out with Xavier?” Lily asked. She stopped for a moment to face her dad, and he laughed.

“No, although I’d trust him more than I would most boys that age.” They started walking again. “I don’t want you to feel you can’t see him over this. And Lily,” his voice grew lower and softer, which Lily found kind of silly but sweet, “I think that if Xavier ever kisses you, you should consider that you both might have wanted to, even if you don’t feel exactly the same about each other. You know, I had friends when I was in college who I ended up kissing at some point. Neither of us ever felt we hadn’t wanted it, but sometimes we decided it wasn’t what we wanted overall. People can go on being friends whether a kiss seems like a good idea or not after the fact.”

“I know,” she said. Lily was glad to have a basically reasonable dad, but there were some things she wasn’t willing to explain to him. If she ever kissed Xavier, she wanted to be completely sure that both of them wanted it and had at least some of the same feelings around it. Merely thinking about it made her body pulse and prickle all over. It was not a completely comfortable feeling, part lust and part the weird sense of disorientation she felt after her intense dreams.

Nonetheless, she asked her dad if he wanted to drive out to Berkeley the next day. He agreed, and she replied to Xavier.

 

It ended up that Lily’s whole family came along to Berkeley. They met Xavier at a café near to campus and the trade show. The café had no curtains, but small glass ornaments and sun catchers hung in the windows. The menu was written on chalkboards and seemed to be entirely vegetarian. Xavier sat next to Lily, and it made her chest feel tight and her skin tingle as soon as he sat down. She was glad to have her whole family there to make conversation, because she couldn’t think of anything to say. Mostly she stayed quiet unless someone asked her a question.

Her lunch came with fairly ordinary vegetable soup and salad, no coconut milk or tahini. The act of eating calmed her body. By halfway through her soup she was relaxed and a little tired. She’d stayed up late Friday night trying to do enough homework to make up for goofing off today. Still, she found herself talking and laughing with the rest. The stained glass light catchers in the café window caught her eye and made her smile.

Xavier said, “You were hungry, I guess?”

Lily looked at her mostly empty bowl and plate, not thinking she’d eaten particularly fast or much. She wondered if he’d noticed some other change. If they’d been alone she would have asked what he meant, but it was a relief to have others around and simply say, “Guess I was.”

Xavier spoke to include the rest of the table and said, “I wasn’t sure if you’d all want to walk over to the conference hall together. I could give you a bit of a campus tour on the way. Or I could go ahead and get tickets. I drew the route on a campus map for you, just in case.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. There was an orange highlighter line showing the route, and a few other buildings were marked in orange as well.

Everyone looked at Lily. No one had even alluded to magic during lunch, but they all knew why Xavier would offer to walk separately. Lily said, “It would be really nice of you to go ahead and get tickets.”

Xavier nodded, “Sure.” He was facing toward Lily, and his eyes half closed as he said it.

She knew it was a passing expression and didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t even much of an expression, maybe an instant of resignation with slightly droopy eyes. But somehow it tugged at Lily and reminded her of the sort of dreams she’d been having about Xavier lately.

Her dad pulled out his wallet and handed Xavier cash for the tickets.

Xavier said, “It’s okay, we can settle up after, because I’ll owe you for lunch.”

“No, no,” her dad said. “Lunch is on me and your ticket, too. I let people take me out when I was in college, and I insist on continuing the tradition.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know. Now run along and buy tickets. We should only be a couple minutes behind you.”

Xavier handed his map to Lily and said “thank you” to the table in general as he left.

Lily’s dad paid their lunch bill at the register, and they all set off. It wasn’t a long walk. Lily used the map to name the campus buildings they passed on the way, and she wondered what Xavier would have added if she’d allowed him to play tour guide. She missed him even though she hadn’t wanted to walk with him, hadn’t wanted to face him for weeks.

The building for the magic convention was large, concrete, and marked with a banner that did not include the word “magic.” In various scripts and colors, it said things like “Palmistry, Kabbalah, Feng Shui, Aura Reading.” There was a table outside where two people were waiting to sell tickets, but there wasn’t currently a line.

Xavier stood in the doorway, and Lily knew it would have felt more natural for him to stand in front. She wondered if he worried at all for himself or if he was merely being polite to her.

He handed them tickets in the doorway, and they all headed inside. Lily felt a moment of fear imagining some sort of sensor in the entry that would send out an alert when she entered. What if gatherings like this were set up by some government agency or secret society to lure people like her? What if they had some way of detecting magical power or connectivity? What if someone else in the building could do what she could but have it work indoors. In that moment, Lily desperately wished that her ability worked indoors, so she could see if anyone glowed. Then she remembered what that would mean for her and Xavier, and she was glad she didn’t have anything more to worry about.

The displays themselves were kind of disappointing. With high echoing ceilings and collapsible tables or displays set up in rows, it looked much like a craft fair. Many tables had scarves or tapestries draped over them. There were stands displaying crystals or incense. Lily walked down the aisle looking for information on anything she hadn’t seen before. There was a display about Kabbalah with a video running and workshop testimonials displayed on the walls. It seemed Kabbalah was some form of Jewish mysticism involving math. That didn’t seem very related to what Lily did. The people who claimed to see auras showed no special interest in her, and she figured if they couldn’t see anything different, then there wasn’t anything to talk to them about.

She looked back and saw only Xavier was still with her. Her dad stood watching the video about Kabbalah while her mom and Rose studied a display landscaped in crystal jewelry. Lily said to Xavier, “I think I’ll try sitting outside to watch people come and go.”

“There a patch of grass across the walk, and you need a hand stamp to get back in.”

She nodded, feeling both reluctant to leave him and curious to try watching others.

“I know you won’t want me out there,” he said, “but is it okay if I check from the doorway sometimes, to see you’re okay?”

She looked at him, wondering what he thought might happen. Had he worried about the government or others having a way to spot people and using this as a trap? Or was he considering more ordinary threats? He’d been prepared to tell her about the hand stamp and where she might find earth to connect with. That made her feel good in a normal, friendly, cared about way, despite the strangeness of the situation. She nodded again and went.

The patch of grass Xavier had mentioned was little more than a divider between walkways, but Lily sat down and sank the fingers of her left hand into the soil. At first, there was nothing, and she wondered if it had even worked. Then she closed her eyes and saw the glow of pigeons across the way. Nothing else around her glowed. She was amazed at the lack of life. When she opened her eyes, she felt herself tense to see all the people walking by. Of course she could hear them, even a quiet weekend campus was noisy with conversations, but it seemed like background noise around her. She closed her eyes again and saw only pigeons.

Then she saw a glow in the building doorway. She opened her eyes, but it was Xavier. He stood inside the doorframe, but she could see him glow anyway. A connection she could feel snapped into place between them, as if he’d been outside. But once he’d seen she was safe, he wandered away from the door, and the connections quickly faded and vanished.

Lily felt herself stiffen again, partly from the connection being broken, partly from realizing it extended indoors. She wondered how far and if it only worked when she was outside. She tried standing up and moving away from the grass. She leaned against a lamppost on the far side of the walk and closed her eyes again. She could barely see the glow of pigeons. The magic here wasn’t very strong, especially with her fingers out of the soil.

She walked the rest of the way to the doorway where Xavier had stood. With her feet just outside, she made a long blink while facing toward the pigeons. She could see them glow about as well as by the lamppost. She stepped just inside and tried again, there was no glow. Stepping out again she confirmed that the pigeons still glowed faintly when she closed her eyes. They did, but when she sought for any connection to her father or Xavier inside, there was nothing. She realized she couldn’t feel much connection to the birds either, and she knew exactly where they were. It wasn’t much of a test, but she hadn't thought to try it before.

The two people at the ticket table looked at her funny. She remembered her worry earlier about sensors in the doorway, but the ticket takers didn’t look sinister. More likely, they thought she was agoraphobic or had some issue about doorways.

Lily walked back to her narrow patch of grass again. She sat and planted her fingers. Now she could feel the pull of the birds if she concentrated. She drew them closer to her to prove she could. When they’d closed half the distance, she stopped pulling, not wanting to feel like a pigeon lady. Then she looked back toward the building, first with eyes closed, then with eyes open. One of the ticket sellers was still looking at her oddly. At Lily’s glance, she looked away. Her hair was streaked with dark red and bright pink and she didn’t look much older than Xavier. Lily wondered if she was a university student who’d been hired or had volunteered to do this for a day.

The next time Lily saw Xavier at the door she focused in on her connection to him and tried to wish for him to step out. It didn’t work, and Lily was pretty sure she wasn’t sincere enough. She knew she was still afraid of wanting him to touch her or to kiss her, the mere thought of which sent a wave of heat through her body. Without hesitation, she channeled that wave of feeling into wanting Xavier to come to her right now.

He stepped out, two steps, his body was completely outside the building. Then he looked down, as if seeing what had happened, and stepped back inside.

Lily shivered and felt the blood rise to her face. Now her mind was screaming for him to stay inside, but she was pretty sure he’d pulled himself in before she’d found the will to send him back. It confirmed all her fears. What if there had been grass and soil all the way up to the door. What if she’d been standing right where she’d called him to? Could she have made him kiss her before he found the presence of mind to resist? She wanted to sink completely into the ground. Luckily, the magic wasn’t strong enough here to offer a chance of losing herself in it.

Xavier was still standing close enough to the door for her to feel the connection. She could tell by his face that he’d figured out what had happened, and she thought if he was sensible he’d step farther away. Of course, he didn’t know how quickly her magic tapered off as he went farther indoors.

Instead, he held up his hands in a small questioning gesture.

Lily wasn’t sure what he was asking and shrugged back.

He pointed to himself and then to her, and she was fairly certain he was asking if he should come out.

She shook her head.

He pointed to himself and then behind him into the exhibit space.

She nodded, and he went.

Then she remembered the ticket woman with the red and pink hair. She looked to see how all this might have appeared to an interested observer. The woman didn’t hide that she’d been watching but rolled her eyes and looked away. Lily was pretty sure no one would be that casual if they suspected they’d seen magic. Even someone selling tickets to displays of supposed magic could apparently dismiss Xavier’s step out, retreat, and hand gestures as part of normal communication.

Lily wondered suddenly if the woman thought Xavier was her boyfriend. Maybe she’d been checking Lily out before and now she was dismissing her as taken. At that moment, two guys passed between her and the entrance she was watching, and Lily noticed that both of the guys were quite attractive and had cute butts (now walking away from her and each other).

She realized she’d slipped into a bit of the headspace that her recent dreams provoked. It wasn’t nearly as intense as after that first dream or several times since, but it made Lily aware of how she had felt toward Xavier as she pulled him from the doorway. She definitely wasn’t ready to be outside with him.

She closed her eyes again and still found no glowing humans, only busy pigeons. With eyes open she watched them finishing off a spilled bag of chips. She knew she should stay outside and watch more for glowing people, but all she wanted was to go inside and talk to Xavier. Partly she wanted to make sure he wasn’t freaked out by her unplanned experiment. Other parts she didn’t feel like thinking about at the moment.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity completely, she did pay attention to her connection to the pigeons as she approached the building. She checked, but couldn’t feel her connection to Xavier or her father from outside the door. She closed her eyes but couldn’t see anything glowing as she faced into the building.

Inside she showed her hand stamp to the security guy who had stamped it. He glanced at it casually enough that she suspected anyone could walk in if they wanted. Then again, he may have observed some of the weirdness with her and Xavier at the doorway today, and that might have made him less inclined to get involved.

Lily wandered until she found Xavier, “Sorry about that,” she said.

He looked up from a book he’d been inspecting and set it back on the table. The title read, Fifty Ways to Leave Your Religion.

He stepped away from the table and led Lily toward a more open area at the end of the aisle. “It’s fine. I wasn’t expecting it. Was part of me outside?”

Lily found herself not wanting to talk. Whatever motives she’d had for wanting to speak to Xavier seemed to have evaporated. She didn’t feel connected by magic, attraction, or even friendship right now and could almost feel the lack of pull where her magical connection had been. The rest was harder to quantify.

Finally she said, “It goes away if I step inside the doorway, but I can still feel connected to you when you’re just inside. Maybe it travels on air currents or something.”

“Or if it’s like magnetism,” he added, eyes opening wider, “Maybe you need to be connected to something magnetic but I need to be in range or not cut off by walls or whatever blocks it.”

She nodded, “Maybe.”

“You look tired.”

Lily shrugged.

“Let’s go find your family.”

Her mother, father, and Rose were all together at a table selling scarves and purses. Lily had to admit the scarves were pretty, but she could see that Rose was failing to convince either parent to buy one for her.

“Why would you need another scarf?” her dad was asking. “You don’t even wear scarves.”

“It could be a gift, for Aunt Mia.”

Her father shook his head with a smile.

Xavier said, “Do you folks want more time here? Would you like to come see my dorm or maybe have a tour?”

Rose said, “I’d like a tour.”

Lily was sure she did it solely to be difficult.

“It’s a good chance to see a college campus,” her mom said.

“Can I just meet you someplace?” Lily asked.

“I marked the bookstore and my dorm on the map.” Lily pulled out the map she’d shoved in her pocket, and Xavier pointed to a couple of places he’d highlighted. “The bookstore is about in the middle, or my dorm is where I thought we’d finish.”

“I’ll wait at the dorm and meet you at the end.”

Xavier nodded and the way he met her eyes made Lily’s insides flip again. She was almost annoyed, wishing she could be over him already. Then he pulled a key card out of his pocket.

“Here, you might as well let yourself into my room. You’ll probably get there before us.” His hand brushed hers as she accepted the key. The brush of his hand brought back a tiny bit of the feelings from the hug. In spite of herself, Lily liked the sensation.

“I’ll walk with Lily,” her mom said. “We can make our own tour.”

Lily set off with her mom, wondering how long the others would wait before leaving the building. She couldn’t help but try to sense the connection.

Her mom said, “I noticed your high school course list marks the classes that count for University of California requirements.”

There was a pause. Lily said, “Yep.”

“You may not know it, but UC Berkeley is a very good school. It has a reputation even outside California. Some of the others, like UCLA, do as well. It might make sense for us to try to stay in California for a while. You could establish residency before applying.”

“Okay.” Lily was still trying to sense any connection, even as she hoped she wouldn’t be able to.

“I don’t want to pressure you, but it’s not too early to start thinking about where you might want to apply.” There was a long pause. “Are you listening, Lily?”

Lily had felt a tug, two tugs. They were very faint and very far away, but Lily could sense where Xavier and her father were. In theory, that might mean she could influence them, but she didn’t want to. She was happy to trust that it wouldn’t work from this far away. Instead, she could use her knowledge to avoid them. Of course, she’d been leading her mom around one edge of campus anyway, so it probably wasn’t necessary. Then again, she hadn’t really expected to detect them with the limited magic in the area and without ever touching the ground. Maybe having connected to her magic here before made it easier even if she’d gone inside in between.

“Earth to Lily,” her mom said.

“Sorry. I will think about college. Audrey keeps mentioning it, too.”

“Well,” her mom said, “Don’t take this wrong, but your friend Audrey may be a little too concerned about college and grades. With all the problems of teen stress and teen suicide in Palo Alto, I’m hoping you can find a good balance.”

When Lily didn’t reply, still busy tracking the others, her mom asked, “How is Audrey anyway?”

“Fine. She’s been super nice to me, although I think she’s a little jealous that Kelly asked me to write a paper that might get published and didn’t ask her.” She didn’t mention the Pete issues to her mom.

“That’s too bad. Couldn’t she write a paper on whatever part she’s involved with?”

“I think I was only asked because of the murrelets. It’s sort of an unfair advantage.”

Her mom didn’t comment for a while. She probably knew as much about Lily’s magic as her dad did, but she hadn’t spoken about it as directly with Lily. Maybe she wasn’t comfortable with the subject in general. While her dad had at least dabbled skeptically in exploring magical possibilities back in New Mexico, her mom had always been interested in more concrete matters, from accounting, to the family budget, to shopping.

Eventually her mom said, “We all have unfair advantages. What a certain person looks like or thinks like might click with certain people or certain jobs. I don’t think you should feel bad about what you can do.”

“It’s okay mom, I’m mostly fine about the birds. I just feel bad for Audrey,” Lily took a breath as the connections faded out, “sometimes.” She missed the feeling of stretched tentative connections for a while, but mostly it made things easier with her mother.

They talked a bit more about Audrey and then a bit more about colleges.

At the dorm, they wandered up to the second floor and unlocked Xavier’s room. It looked incredibly tidy, making it clear that Xavier had been prepared to show it to everyone. To Lily that was reassuring. If they’d let themselves into a messy room, with no place to sit and an unmade bed, she would have felt even more out of place.

As it was, Lily and her mom looked around as if visiting a museum display. The calendar showed standing stones at Easter Island with bunny-eared cartoon characters saying, “What do you think built those?” On top of his bookshelf there were woven baskets that might have been Navajo, but the rest of the room was typical college issue. The desk and dresser were scarred wood that probably came with the room. The desk held a laptop, several charging stations, and a digital clock. The dresser displayed a picture of Xavier’s father, a UC Berkeley pewter bear, and a Rubik’s cube with chemical symbols printed on each square.

In the end, Lily and her mom flipped through a couple of textbooks off Xavier’s shelf, curious to see what they were like. To Lily, they didn’t look that different from high school, but she didn’t look that closely. She felt a little guilty for not bringing her own homework to do.

She knew Xavier, her dad, and Rose by their footsteps in the hall before they opened the door. Once they’d all entered the room it was crowded, and Lily figured they wouldn’t stay long. Then her dad surprised her by saying, “We didn’t stop to look at the bookstore, because we didn’t want to leave you waiting that long. But I’d love to go back if you wouldn’t mind.”

The way her dad looked at her when he asked, Lily wasn’t sure if she was being invited along or if he planned to go back on his own. She said, “Whatever.” Then she was surprised when the rest of her family took off, leaving her alone with Xavier in his room. She turned to him and asked, “Was that planned?”

“Not with me,” he said, though he didn’t act like it was particularly strange. He straightened up a little. “Would you rather be with them?”

At first she felt she would, just to avoid the too open look in his eyes. Then she remembered with a rush how much she wanted to be with him, to reconnect, to do other things that she knew weren’t going to happen.

Xavier stood still, waiting for her to answer, and she knew she would hurt his feelings if she said “yes.” She didn’t want to hurt him, even if she was still a little hurt herself.

“We should talk,” she said.

He relaxed and moved to sit against the edge of his desk.

Lily realized she was still sitting on his bed, where she and her mom had been looking at textbooks. She suddenly felt wound up like a spool of thread, maybe because Xavier looked unfairly relaxed.

The silence stretched, and Xavier finally said, “I know you’re uncomfortable with me now, and I know it’s not only about the magic. I’m sorry if I’m being a clueless guy, but I’m not sure I know exactly what went wrong.”

He said it casually. He was quiet and serious and Lily didn’t doubt he meant well, but it was hard seeing him act so relaxed about it. Her insides writhed as if her belly were full of snakes, and she had a strong physical memory of how she’d felt during that one amazing hug and then with all her bizarre dreams. She blurted out, “I can’t get over feeling attracted to you. I know that hug in the kitchen wasn’t supposed to mean much, but it meant a lot to me. Now I’m having dreams like I’ve never had before, about you, and it’s hard knowing it’s not that big of a deal to you.”

Lily immediately wanted to take it all back. She hadn’t meant to say it, certainly never that way. It was too much. She could see Xavier’s mouth work as he tried to take it all in. He was too nice of a guy for her to dump on him like that. For a moment, his body seemed frozen in its casual lean against the desk. His face worked through emotions without hiding a thing. His mouth opened a bit, closed. His eyebrows went up as he bit his lip and scrunched toward the center, forcing his mouth into something like a pout. Then he took a breath, opened his mouth as if he was about to speak, then closed it again as if he didn’t know what to say.

Watching him struggle like a fish out of water had every nerve ending in her body clamoring to rush forward and hug him, but she was sure that was exactly the wrong thing to do. She was also pretty sure that if they’d been outside when she felt this way, her wanting would have projected very strongly to Xavier. She remembered the moment in the doorway earlier and thought that if she ever caught him off guard with something like this, it would happen. How long would it take her to un-want it? Even that thought of touching Xavier made her body pulse with sensation, and she knew she was hopelessly far gone.

Finally Xavier said, “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“Just say what you’re thinking. It seems to be how our conversations work.”

Xavier looked at her and his eyes seemed to stare right into her brain. “It’s funny. I think I’ve let you take on more of the trouble of being honest. I didn’t realize until now how unfair that might be.”

Lily looked down and swallowed. She braced herself for something bad.

“Why do you look away at that? Do you want me to be honest or not?”

“Just tell me. I can’t stand much more suspense.”

“Okay,” he took a deep breath. “Back in New Mexico, I was pretty sure you weren’t interested in me. When we met again here, you made it pretty clear that you were, but it seemed weird. The age difference seems to matter more now that I’m eighteen and in college. But—”

Lily felt herself holding still, very still, not wanting to make any move or any sound.

“I guess if I’m going to be honest, I should admit that I always found you attractive, and if anything, knowing you were somewhat interested in me made me feel it even more.”

Lily took a deep breath, not sure if her parents were very wise or very stupid to leave the two of them alone together like this. At least they were safely inside. She asked, “And when you hugged me in the kitchen, what was that to you?”

Xavier shook his head, “I don’t know, Lily. It’s hard not to rationalize. I thought I shouldn’t make any real moves on you. I probably did give in because I wanted to and then rationalized that is was useful for testing the magic. I’m sorry if what happened that day upset you. Maybe I was a little out of control with the success of all the magic earlier. You know, that morning was the first time I knew that magic had been used on me in a provable, knowable way. And then when I blocked it, that was the closest to using magic myself that I’ve come so far.”

“Are you saying my magic turned you on?” Lily glared at him in disbelief.

“No, or at least I can see you’re taking that as a bad thing, and that’s not the way I mean it.” He crossed his arm but kept his distance. “If I admitted to being attracted to you and then said that when you touched me it made me desperate to reach out and hold you, would that make sense?”

Lily nodded.

“Well, having your magic act on me, even if I can’t actually feel it at that time, it’s a lot like having been touched by you. So yeah, I think it had something to do with me hugging you the way I did.”

“This probably isn’t a fair question, but when you say ‘the way I did’ what does that mean? What did that hug feel like to you?”

He shifted foot to foot. “It felt good, Lily. It felt really, really good, maybe too good. Is that what you want to know?”

Lily was crying. She felt the tears on her face and had to think about why. What she was feeling wasn’t happiness or sadness. It wasn’t relief or satisfaction either. It was something about not being alone. It mattered a lot to her that Xavier had felt something special then too.

“Lily?”

She looked up, embarrassed by her tears, wondering if Xavier could possibly understand.

He asked very softly, “Would it be good or bad if I wanted to hug you now?”

She managed to say “good,” but neither of them moved. Then Xavier uncrossed his arms and held them out a little. He wanted her to stand up, to come at least part of the way to him. That seemed fair.

She stood, and he stepped forward, and he wrapped his arms around her. It wasn’t quite the top only hug they’d shared before, but his arms were on her waist and back, and she felt her arms drift to his waist as she melted into him.

The hug wasn’t as electric as the first time. It was bittersweet but seemed to reach much deeper than her skin. There was warmth and some of the charge that made her want to kiss Xavier. Mostly though, she felt safe and wanted and not alone.

There weren’t any words or sense of time in Lily’s thoughts for a while and then she started to wonder how long it had been and when her family might come back. Still, she didn’t want to let go. It occurred to her gradually that she could talk to Xavier without moving away. Her head was resting against his shoulder and she didn’t want to move it.

“Xavier, how long has it been?”

“Only a few minutes.” He rubbed her back, and it felt like he was smiling even though she couldn’t see or feel his face. She realized her eyes were closed and that she could open them if she wanted to see him. Instead, she kept them closed and held on.

“Are we okay?” she asked.

“That’s one word for it.”

Again, she felt something in his muscles, a slight squeeze or lift. It felt like a smile expressed though the whole body. Lily liked the way it felt.

 


	2. Part Two

 

10

Fieldwork

Lily floated through the car ride home and even felt pretty good working on her English essay. She was determined to finish at least that one essay despite having goofed off for half the day. Then Kelly called around dinnertime to say Dr. Lebowski had rearranged her flight home from a conference to stop by the Bay Area. She hoped to be at the wetlands at 6 AM the next morning, and Kelly wanted the whole team there to meet her.

Lily worked and fretted until almost eleven. She had trouble focusing on her English paper amidst fears that Lebowski would hate her and new hopes for her relationship with Xavier and even her strangely intense dreams.

 

There was no dream. Instead, she woke to the alarm clock at 5:30 in the morning.

It was foggy as she biked, but the Faber Tract looked lush and wild under a layer of dew and mist. Lily breathed deeply as she pulled up at her usual bike parking spot by the water pumping station. Audrey arrived before she’d finished locking up. Then Dr. Martin, Kelly, and another woman who could only be Dr. Lebowski came out of the marsh area and headed back toward the levee. Dr. Lebowski was much taller than Kelly and much, much older. Her hair was black with streaks of gray, and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were visible from a hundred yards away

Lily felt her heart thumping and wanted to run to meet them. Instead, she walked at a normal speed with Audrey. As they walked, Lily opened her connection to the murrelets and was relieved to find Willow and Wispy out some ways over the bay. She checked for the salt marsh harvest mouse as well, and found it moving quickly not too far away. Then it stopped, paused, and rushed out again.

When they reached the others, Kelly performed introductions.

Prof. Lebowski said, “You can call me Rachel.” Focusing on Lily she said, “I hear you discovered the murrelets and that they’re very comfortable with you?”

Lily nodded with a lump in her throat. She couldn’t believe this important person had singled her out already, and she hoped Audrey wouldn’t be too annoyed.

“You haven’t been feeding them?”

“No, never.” Lily shook her head.

“Your draft paper said nothing about where they’re finding large supplies of shrimp or other unusual components of their diet. Do you have any theories as to where they’re feeding?”

“No.”

Rachel nodded sharply as if expecting no better. “How did these birds come to be this comfortable around you?”

Lily looked at Audrey who looked pointedly away. Kelly and Dr. Martin were also watching Lily and keeping quiet. Lily said, “Well, the first time I saw them I was sitting there,” she pointed to where her initial quadrat had been. “The murrelets came and watched me from across that channel. It was drier and the channel was almost empty back in August.” Pointing to the line of cord grass, Lily could almost picture the birds standing there. “I returned most days and sometimes they came a little closer, until I was within a couple yards. They let me take flash pictures, and they sometimes stayed for hours. The one with the less clear eye marking, the male, flew in one day and dropped a feather for the first DNA sample. The guano came after one very long morning of waiting with the birds.”

“Did you wait for the birds to leave before collecting the samples?” Rachel asked, eyes still tight and skeptical.

“Definitely.”

“What’s the closest the birds have come to you?”

“Well, the male came within a foot after he flew in that one time. “

“I think that you and I should go out to your observation point and see if I can attach a tracking device to one of those birds. “The rest of the team can stay back here or at the van with Max.”

“Okay,” Lily whispered when no one else objected.

Rachel motioned for Lily to lead, and so they set out.

Lily went to the closest watching place she’d used, a couple yards from the tall grasses along the little edge channel. She stopped and knelt down. A rustle told her that Rachel was stopping just behind her. Lily looked back and saw the professor carefully arrange a net on a pole, a small black bag on her knee, and a couple of black metal clips hooked to the edge of her vest pocket.

Lily realized she hadn’t been told exactly how they were going to do this, although she could guess from the net. She hadn’t been trained to tag a bird or even to assist or stay out of the way. Instead, she felt like the lure on a fishing line, and then wanted to laugh, because she wasn’t the one with feathers.

For several minutes, she sat quietly, keeping her hands distinctly away from the ground. She didn’t try to find the murrelets or feel other connections, but they crept into her awareness as surely as the chill, damp breeze and the slight rubbing sound it caused in the cord grass. Lily soon knew her murrelets were both out over the water. Her salt marsh harvest mouse was moving quickly in small bursts. Other harvest mice were moving around, and Lily realized how much more active they were at this hour. A calm bobbing presence was approaching from the right and Lily looked over to see a bird she didn’t know. It was mostly black with long legs and a long beak. Every couple seconds it dipped its beak toward the trickle of water and often seemed to bring something up.

The dark bird passed directly in front of Lily, still feeding, but Lily couldn’t make out what it ate.

To Lily, it’s passage seemed to take forever, but after it disappeared Lily checked her watch and found it was only 6:30 AM.

By the time the murrelets headed in from the bay, Lily had watched five small birds and one great egret pass by. Rachel had stayed silent behind her, and Lily looked back to see her and was grabbed all at once by the pull of connection and a human-sized flash of light as Lily briefly blinked her eyes. Lily wondered how she could have been oblivious for so long, but she hadn’t been touching ground or trying to use her magic.

Now Lily’s mind flooded with questions and concerns just as her birds were approaching. If she didn’t do anything to stop them, they’d follow the faint bond she’d spun to track them. But if Rachel was magic, could she also sense or call them somehow? Would she be able to after Lily bought them in this first time? Did Rachel already know what Lily could do and was her magic something similar?

Looking farther back, Lily saw that Max had joined Ashley, Kelly and Dr. Martin on the levee. That settled the morning into something a little more comfortable, and Lily decided to ignore what she’d discovered about Rachel.

She didn’t touch the ground or try to call the birds, but she felt the connection between them and didn’t do anything to stop it. Sitting very still, she watched Wispy land in front of the reeds beside the tiny channel of water, and Willow came in a little less steadily to land almost out of sight behind a tangle of plants.

Lily had tried to forget her worries about Rachel and magic, but as soon as Wispy landed, Lily felt the pull between them reconfigure as a triangle, connecting Rachel as well.

Rachel moved the net slowly, picking her way forward and across the trickle of water to the other side. Then she plopped the net down on the murrelet and hopped across the channel to hold the bird firmly through the net.

Lily had felt the fear rise in both herself and the bird as the net fell. As the connection began to fuzz, she’d lowered her hand instinctively toward the ground, but the pull stabilized in the moment before she touched dirt.

At that moment, Rachel pulled a little black bag over the bird’s head, right over the net, and held its wings tight to its body. Nervousness spiked again for a moment, and Lily’s finger connected to the ground. She pushed for calm even as an unfamiliar drowsiness seemed to come over the Wispy.

Lily saw Rachel’s hands shifting and the glint of metal from one of the tags. The triangular connection was strong and stable now, but there was something strange about the murrelet’s sleepiness. It bothered Lily, and she closed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t missing any clues. The huge glowing form of Rachel, right in front of her, hands wrapped around the murrelet, was too much. Lily opened her eyes in time to see Rachel set the bird back down and remove the little black hood and the net.

Lily felt the connection fuzz again and tried to release any pull so the bird was free to go. As Wispy walked quickly away, Lily noticed he had two small black bands, one on each leg. Rachel had been quick; Lily had only seen one of them go on. They didn’t seem to bother the bird, and Willow joined him, staying out of sight. Still, Lily kept track of them, worried about the strange drowsiness she knew must be a partial anesthetic.

Rachel was staying very still, right where she’d released the bird, for a full minute. Then she crept back toward Lily who surreptitiously wiped her dirty fingers on her jeans. They stood and walked back toward the others, and the tug of magical connection between herself and Rachel made Lily feel a little like a dog on a leash.

By the time Lily and Rachel made it back, the others were peering at a laptop screen.

“All good?” Rachel asked.

Max answered, “Both transmitter and back up are broadcasting.”

Kelly said, “I have video,” and she tapped a large pair of binoculars around her neck.

Rachel smiled, “And I collected a chest feather and a blood sample. Seems like all went well on our first attempt.” She looked at Lily for a long moment then glanced at Audrey as well. “I don’t think I’m going to try to tag the other bird. Something about its flight was off, and I wouldn’t want to aggravate an injury. “

Lily was glad to hear the concern expressed by Rachel, even as she wondered if Willow had sustained some injury, possibly whatever brought the birds here in the first place, and how bad it might be.

The group went back to the van where hot coffee and tea were served out of thermoses. After watching the laptop for a long while, Kelly said, “The murrelet seems to be heading out again. Max, can you show us the GIS overlay?”

Max tapped on the laptop for a moment and a map appeared and zoomed in on the moving red dot of the tracking device. The dot didn’t move smoothly, but it jumped ahead in a predictable direction. Finally, the dot stayed in one area.”

“That can’t be a fishery,” Dr. Martin said.

“I think it’s a reclaimed salt pond,” Kelly said, leaning closer. “There’s a bunch of them down at the south end of the bay being reclaimed as wetlands.”

“That could answer a lot,” Rachel smiled. There was a long pause while Kelly and Rachel stared at the screen and the others waited for them to continue. “I wonder if they’ve had a population explosion of something these birds might feed on. Do you know any of the researchers involved?”

“I can find out.” With that, Kelly pulled out her cell phone and began what became a very long round of calls.

Lily found that she was chilled through, aside from where her hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea. The tea was bitter and unpleasant, but she’d been holding the cup with both hands for a while, enjoying the warmth. She decided to walk around a bit and see if that helped.

From where the van was parked, she couldn’t see the marsh. Without meaning to, she found herself walking out along the levee again. She was out past her usual marker when she suddenly felt a connection pulling strongly from behind. Rachel had followed without Lily even noticing.

“Nice work out there,” Rachel whispered. It was brighter now, but the fog hadn’t totally cleared and the sound of Rachel’s voice seemed to carry more than it should.

Lily was suddenly reminded of walking with Makana in Hawaii and wished she hadn’t walked away from the group. It occurred to her that she might not have actually chosen to walk. If Rachel was like her, she might be able to influence Lily, and that scared Lily in an entirely new way. She felt the chill from outside seep into her bones and determined to resist any further influence.

She answered softly, “I didn’t do much.”

A puffing sound from Rachel’s nose might have been a slight chuckle, or just a reaction to the cold. “You know the bird came to you, don’t you? You have a special way, at least with those birds. Some of us do. A colleague of mine calls us ‘bird whisperers.’”

Lily shrugged, wishing Rachel would leave her alone.

Rachel looked at her, “Well, if you want a summer job referral, give me a call.”

They walked a minute more with Lily telling herself over and over that she mustn’t agree to anything. Then Rachel pointed to a faint rainbow over the bay. After a pause, they both turned back toward the van and walked together, neither of them speaking.

When they reached the others, Kelly said, “I couldn’t track down anyone by phone yet.”

“We could drive down and look,” Rachel replied. “I need to be back at the airport by noon.”

As it worked out, they all ended up in the van heading down to San Jose. They cruised around a couple of reclaimed salt ponds near the tracking device signal. The bird was still in the area, but the signal wasn’t that specific. Rachel kept asking Lily if she saw any sign, but none of them spotted anything. Lily wondered if Rachel realized her magic wouldn’t work in a car. That made Lily worry that Rachel’s magic, however else it might differ, could work in cars. She went around and around in her mind about whether she should confront Rachel directly, and about whether she could safely decide in the van, if there was a chance Rachel might have magical influence and it might still work inside the van.

Finally, Kelly declared that they should park by one of the likely salt ponds, get out, and look around. As they headed out from a gravel parking lot, they split up to cover more area. Lily and Kelly carried cameras and Rachel had the big binoculars that could also record video. Max, Audrey, and Dr. Martin carried only their cell phones to document if they saw anything, and Lily doubted Dr. Martin even knew how to take photos with his. Everyone agreed to meet back at the van by eleven.

Having time alone seemed better than chocolate to Lily by that point. The whole thing with Rachel made her nervous. She was fairly sure now that there’d been magic involved when Rachel wanted Lily to wander away from the group, which meant that Lily could be affected by magic that way. She thought she’d successfully resisted whatever Rachel might have wanted her to agree to, and that was encouraging in a small way. But Lily wasn’t sure if she’d affected Rachel with her wish to head back when they were walking on the levee, and although she’d tried not to want anything from Rachel, she wasn’t at all sure that she’d know if she failed.

All in all, it made Lily want some time off. Part of her wanted to experiment, to learn more about her magic, maybe even try to get Rachel to tell her something directly. Part of her felt paralyzing fear at the thought, and the fear made her cold along her arms and stiff all over. She wanted to talk to Xavier about everything that had happened, but she wouldn’t have that conversation by phone even if she liked phones. Before Rachel left today at noon, Lily needed to decide if she was trying to impress her or avoid her, and she’d have to do her best to block any magic that might bias her decision.

She took a few pictures as she walked, documenting the ecology around the former salt ponds. There wasn’t enough local magic to make her feel any connections right off, and she was careful not to touch the ground. It was sunny in San Jose, and after a while, Lily was wiping sweat off her face and didn’t feel chilled or stiff anymore. She pulled off her sweater and tied it around her waist. A slight breeze and the hot sun on her arms seemed to pass right into her blood stream, recharging her.

She walked until there was a lone tree with shade and sat down leaning against the trunk. Her fingers seemed to touch the ground on accident and she could instantly feel the pull of the murrelets, the pull of Rachel, and a dozen tiny, closer pulls that she couldn’t immediately identify.

Both Rachel and the murrelets were north of her. Lily hadn’t wanted to find the murrelet herself, because she thought it would be conspicuous and suspicious. But she realized that she might be able to draw Rachel closer to the murrelets if Rachel didn’t know how to do that for herself. It would test Lily’s magic, and if Rachel didn’t already know how her “bird whispering” worked, then she’d probably be none the wiser.

Lily sat with her fingers in the soil long enough to see that Rachel was not moving closer to either murrelet. It could be a ploy to make Lily reveal her magic, but it seemed more likely that Rachel couldn’t use magic that way. As Wispy flew out over the bay, Lily dug her fingers into the soil and concentrated on sending Rachel closer to Willow.

Before, when Lily had experimented with her Dad and Xavier, she’d always thought words at them, but for this she used something more like the pull that drew the birds to her. She directed the pull on Rachel toward Willow, who cooperatively stayed pecking around in one place on the ground.

It was slow work. The connections felt clear, but both Rachel and the bird were fairly far away from Lily, and Rachel seemed to be moving very slowly. Lily wasn’t sure how far apart they were. She tried closing her eyes, but even when she could see Rachel’s glow fairly well and the bird as a clear bright dot, she couldn’t fix it with the real scenery in front of her. She opened her eyes while facing directly toward Rachel’s glow, but she couldn’t see Rachel at all. Binoculars might have helped. Lily closed her eyes and kept trying.

The ground seemed to warm and give her more strength the longer Lily worked at pushing Rachel toward Willow. More and more glowing creatures also seemed to appear around Lily, but she kept her focus on Rachel and the murrelet. She thought Rachel was close enough to see the murrelet for a while, but as Rachel’s movements didn’t change, Lily could only assume she hadn’t spotted the bird. Then all of a sudden, her two connections became a triangle, as a natural connection between Rachel and Willow snapped into place. Lily stopped pulling and watched with closed eyes as Rachel slowed even more and then crept toward the bird. Lily hoped the professor would get some good video and even figure out what the bird was eating, but she knew she’d have to wait until later to find out.

Releasing her grip on the soil, Lily opened her eyes.

No more than five feet away, Audrey stood staring at her.

Lily jerked her arms close to her chest, covering her dirty fingers. Then she thought better of it and tried to relax. “You startled me,” she said.

“You had me sort of worried. What were you doing?”

“Ah, meditating?”

Audrey looked at her blankly.

“I know it looks sort of weird, but it’s very relaxing.”

“You didn’t answer when I called your name.”

“Really? Maybe I’d dozed off a bit.”

“What about looking for the murrelet?”

Lily didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t usually good at lying, and she didn’t want to lie to Audrey, but she didn’t know what else to do.

“My mind kept wandering. It’s been a long day already, and I thought this might help.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Now Audrey looked more concerned than annoyed, and Lily felt even more guilty about lying to her.

“Just a little embarrassed.”

Audrey slouched and relaxed as if that at least made sense to her. “It’s okay. I was just surprised to see you sitting up but acting asleep. I hadn’t seen meditation like that.”

“Were you here a long while?”

“No, only a couple minutes. I thought about shaking you, but then I remembered a story about sleepwalkers and how you shouldn’t wake them. I didn’t think you were sleepwalking, or sleep-sitting or whatever, but maybe it was just as well.”

“Sorry if it was freaky.”

“No problem. I might like to learn sometime. I’ve heard meditation is a good way to manage stress and improve sleep.”

 

By the time Lily and Audrey walked back to the van, it was almost eleven. Max and Kelly were there already. Lily could feel enough of her lingering connection to Rachel and the bird to know they were still very near to each other and still to the north of the group. The magic was weaker the farther she went from the bay, even though the parking lot was still within sight of the water.

Finally, Kelly received a text message from Rachel and they all tromped out to see what she’d found. Lily felt Rachel moving away from the bird. By the time they met her, the bird was a hundred yards out from them on the raised rim of a salt pond. Nonetheless, the connection wavered and the bird took flight.

Lily didn’t know if she could call it back without touching the ground, but she refused to try. She thought it firmly, just in case Rachel had other ideas that might affect her. But Rachel told the others excitedly about what she’d found. “This bird looks more like a standard ancient murrelet than the other specimen, but it feeds more like a shorebird. And look at it now. See the way it bobs a little more to the right? I couldn’t see any injury, but there might be something that prevents it from diving. Or maybe its flying was worse for a while and this pair developed unusual feeding habits to compensate. Anyway, there seem to be shrimp and other small fry in this pond, and the murrelet fed like a wader taking what was easy from the side. I couldn’t get close enough for blood or feather samples, but I have lots of video I can show you on the laptop.”

They watched video of Willows feeding behaviors as they drove Rachel to the airport. Then Audrey and Lily were dropped off by the wetlands and their bikes.

“What did you think of Lebowski?” Audrey asked when they were alone.

“She was kind of pushy, but she did well with the birds.”

Audrey's eyebrows raised in surprise. “I thought she liked you?”

“She accused me of feeding the birds to make them like me.”

“That was at the start. What did she say when she followed you out on the levee, before we went to the salt ponds?”

Lily felt guilty, but she didn’t want to lie more than she had to. “Not much. She asked if I’d thought about summer jobs.”

Audrey shook her head. “Why were you off meditating instead of out there trying to impress someone like that?”

“I don’t know.” Lily couldn’t meet Audrey’s eyes. “She made me feel uncomfortable.”

Audrey straddled her bike, as if she was giving up on the conversation, but then she said, “Sometimes you have to seize your opportunities, even if they make you uncomfortable.”

As she biked home, Lily thought about opportunities and about everything that had happened with Rachel. She wanted to ask Xavier to come visit right away, but it felt like their relationship was too fragile for that at the moment, and it wasn’t as if she need to decide anything right away. As she tried to bury herself in homework, Lily became more and more convinced that she’d been influenced by magic. The way she’d brought Rachel to Willow had been a useful experiment and useful for their research, but not the sort of thing Lily would decide to do on the spur of the moment. What Lily wasn’t sure about was whether Rachel knew she had magic or was simply used to getting what she wanted.

 

By the time her mom brought Rose home from the candlelight vigil, it was past midnight. Her mom came and rubbed Lily’s shoulders as Rose clattered off to the bathroom.

“Are you still doing homework?” her mom asked.

“I needed to add a few bits to the murrelet paper.”

“I thought that was done?”

“We learned more today, and anyway, it’s never done.”

“Sleep, Lily. You need sleep.”

“I will in a few minutes.”

Her mom kissed her hair and went off to bed.

As it worked out, Lily mailed another draft of her paper at 1:58 AM. In bed, she seemed to fall into a dream almost immediately. She felt Xavier beside her, sliding his arms around her, and the intensity of their first hug seemed to merge with the more serious, deeper stirrings of their second. She was swallowed up in a timeless, very tactile place.

When she woke and saw her clock read ten minutes past two, she floated on the buzzing happiness of her skin. She wondered why she dreamed at this time when she’d barely gone to sleep and why this night and not the one before. But now that she’d settled things with Xavier on some level, she didn’t feel annoyed at herself for dreaming about him, especially not when she felt fabulous afterward.

Lily lay awake for at least half an hour, thinking about Xavier and her peculiar dreams. They were unlike anything she’d dreamed before. She wondered if it meant she was in love with him.

The next morning at school she was sleepy but also very turned on again. She remembered the fog on the wetlands the previous morning and imagined she saw her classmates through a mist, looking more lush and attractive because they glistened, as if with dew. She felt relaxed and excited at the same time. Her skin reacted to every breeze as a door opened, and her stomach seemed to twist a bit when she noticed her classmates posing in ways that showed their best features.

It was an awful morning as far as taking notes or following lectures. Several times in English, she realized she had no idea what her teacher had said, even if it was followed by “which was symbolic of the author’s main theme”. She hadn’t even caught what the main theme was supposed to be. At least she’d finished her paper on the last book and handed it in at the beginning of class. She hoped that tonight she’d be able to sleep and pull herself together for the rest of the week.

At lunch, Audrey brushed against Lily as she sat down on the bench, and it sent a blaze of warmth from one side of Lily’s body to the other.

“I had the stupidest conversations with Mr. Miles,” Audrey began. Her words were fast, as was her breathing, and Lily breathed harder just to hear it. “He started out all apologetic like, ‘I know there are students here who take math classes at Stanford,’ and “Some people think girls don’t innovate as well in math,’ and then out of all this he asked me to be on the Math Academy Team!”

“Cool. What’s that?” Lily asked.

Audrey rolled her eyes and slid away a couple of inches. “Great. It’s like the biggest honor of my life, and you don’t even know what it is.”

“Sorry,” Lily squeaked. “I’m sure it’s great, and I know you’re really good a math. I’m happy for you.” She hadn’t really thought Audrey was that amazing at math, but given how good she was at everything else, it was easy to believe.

Audrey nodded, wrinkling her forehead at Lily. “Well, it’s big, and I’m going to the resource center to see if they have any useful study guides.” She gathered up the stuff she’d put down beside her. Lily could tell Audrey hadn’t planned to leave so soon from the way she’d scattered her stuff.

“Wait. I want to hear about it, really.”

But Audrey scooped her lunch up on top of her books. “Oh, and are you done with my science flashcards?”

Lily scrunched her eyes. She’d forgotten all about them. “I’m sorry. I was swamped this weekend. Can I have a few more days?”

“Swamped, right. You were with your boyfriend after our outing with Dr. Lebowski.” Audrey shook her head in a mocking way that Lily hadn’t seen from her before. “It’s written all over you.”

And with that Audrey was gone, leaving Lily to wonder what she’d shown, and whether it came from seeing Xavier, which had been on Saturday after all, or from the dream last night. Either way, it was like being naked in public, and the kind of sensual buzz she’d been enjoying now made her shiver with embarrassed uncertainty. Audrey had been kind to her after the meditation incident on Sunday. She wasn’t sure now if Audrey was jealous of Xavier or upset that Lily hadn’t focused enough on her news.

Not knowing what else to do, she pulled out the flashcards and spent the rest of lunch frantically copying.

 

Lily worked hard all week. On Wednesday she handed Audrey her flashcards across the snack table at Stanford. Audrey said “thanks” then pretended to be absorbed in her work. She hadn’t met with Lily for lunch since Monday.

Kelly handed back a printed copy of Lily’s murrelet paper with suggestions for even more revisions.

 

On Friday, she read an email from Xavier:

            Can I see you tomorrow? You can name the time and place. -X

Lily took a deep breath and her body suddenly remembered her dream from Sunday night. She wrote back:

Would ten o’clock here work? Also, do you have any interest in editing a paper on the murrelets that I’m supposed to revise? There are parts my advisor said I should explain better, but my head’s full of it.

He wrote back:

I’d love to read about the murrelets! Send it on. And ten tomorrow is great.

Lily sent him the electronic version of the paper and also a scan of the parts most post it noted by Kelly. The suggestions were mostly about writing clearly or explaining in more depth, but Lily had already done the best she could with it.

After that, Lily went to the database, trying to fill a few information gaps that bothered her.

An hour later, Xavier sent a new draft of her paper with parts rewritten or added in red. Where he didn’t know a fact he put “XXX.” Lily was stunned. She hadn’t expected any feedback until at least the next day. Reading his first few revisions, Lily understood much better what Kelly had been asking for.

She sent Xavier a quick “Thanks” and worked to pull the whole thing into shape before bed. She ate dinner at her computer, which her parents didn’t like. In the end, she was fairly happy with the results.

 

That night she was in bed by ten and had a very nice dream about building a mobile with Xavier, but it wasn’t the sort of dream that had woken her up other nights. In the morning, she wondered why she dreamed that way some nights and not others. Then she rushed out to see the murrelets before Xavier came.

 

Once again, one murrelet seemed to be sleeping, in about the same place as before. The other was awake and nearby. Lily gently pulled it to her usual watching place. She’d thought that if Willow came, she might try to collect a feather, but this was Wispy with the funny eyebrows. She already had a feather from him, but as she studied the single connection, she felt sure she’d be able to tell them apart from then on.

She eased off her pull and let the murrelet go about his business, while she sank her fingers into the ground and sensed the other glows and pulls around her. She found the snowy and great egrets nearby. Knowing they’d keep feeding as they walked, she pulled them to her. It was as if she could feel their stately way of walking, one foot raised high and then the other as they approached. Probably she was reading that in from what she knew. Opening her eyes, she watched the birds feed and strut in the channel that ran along this edge of the wetlands.

Then she felt a strong tug from behind and turned with her eyes open to see a person up on the levee near where she’d left her bike. She knew it was Xavier from a quick glimpse of the way he stood, sort of tall and loose, and to her, very attractive. She closed her eyes to be sure, and he glowed much brighter than anything in the marsh. Her heart thumped, and in a panic she thought, “Go!” in exactly the way she’d successfully thought “Stop!” before.

Xavier turned his bike around and left. Lily watched him as a burning figure behind her closed eyes until she realized that the connection around her had fuzzed with nervousness. She wondered if that was solely her own emotion or if she’d somehow transmitted it to the birds. Just in case, she took a deep breath and tried to calm down and gently ease her pull on them.

The deep breath had some effect, but she could feel her anxiety rising as words and questions filled her mind. Would Xavier bike safely after she commanded him to go? Would he realize it was magic before he got inside? Would he go to her house or start heading back to Berkeley?

Carefully Lily removed her hands from the soil. She stood and started walking toward her bike, but as she thought of Xavier she felt their connection. He was definitely biking away along the bike path toward her house, but it was still possible he’d turn back toward Berkeley when he reached the street. Lily tried very hard not to think in the way that might influence him. More than anything else, she wanted him to bike safely, without anything she did messing him up.

By the time she reached the edge of the wetlands, she could tell that Xavier was at or near her house. She thought he should have been inside already, but then she wouldn’t be able to feel the connection. Perhaps he was standing just inside the doorway where her magic could still reach him if the door was open. But that seemed kind of silly.

She biked closer and knew before the last turn that Xavier was still outside, that he hadn’t even gone all the way to her door.

She rounded the corner and saw him standing in front of her house with his bike. She could feel the pull like an anchor behind her rib cage. Four houses away, she stopped and got off her bike. She didn’t want to go within touching distance. Just thinking about it made her skin tingle, but she also felt like she could burst with anger.

“Go inside!” she thought at him.

Then she felt something in the connection between them that she’d never noticed with a person before. It was a spike in the fuzz or static, like when the birds were nervous or their instincts told them to run away. She wondered for a moment if it was her own nervousness or fear, but somehow she knew it wasn’t coming from her side of the connection. _Was Xavier nervous or afraid of her?_

She said out loud, “Please, go inside.”

“Okay,” Xavier smiled, and the connection was immediately smooth and strong again.

Watching as Xavier stowed his bike behind the house, Lily tried not to think anything in a magical way. She tried to think only about bicycles, noticing the scratches on the lower bar of Xavier’s bike frame, noticing that he used a small key from his pocket to unlock the U-shaped lock. He put it around his frame and front wheel. She watched him walk to the front door where her mother let him in. It wasn’t until the door closed and the pull stopped that she let herself think about how much she’d wanted to see him and how bad it could have been being outside with him that way.

She locked up her own bike and walked in to find Xavier in the living room chatting with her mom. They’d planned brunch for when he came, so it wasn’t until later that she had a chance to ask questions.

They went to Lily’s room again. It seemed strange to be alone with him now, and Lily couldn’t sit on her bed after the dreams she’d had about him. She stood by her window instead.

Xavier crossed the room to stand beside her. He put a hand on her arm and said, “Hey.”

The touch sent a flood of sensation through her. She knew she should talk first if she wanted to ask him about his arrival that morning, but somehow, she couldn’t make herself speak. He moved his hand a few inches up and down on her arm, and she wanted him to hug her, maybe even kiss her.

“Did your paper work out last night?” he asked, his hand still on her arm.

“Yeah,” she found her voice but didn’t look at him as she spoke, “You were really helpful. Thanks.”

“I liked reading it. You seem to have learned a lot since Dr. Lebowski’s visit.”

“About the birds?” she looked at him, and his eyes were so close and focused that she couldn’t look away.

“I think about them a lot, probably because they’re important to you, but also, it’s pretty cool knowing they’re here. And you found them.”

She looked as his face. He seemed relaxed, not as if he was going to kiss her. She thought about kissing him, but the moment had passed.

“Is that why you came out to the Faber Tract this morning?” she asked.

“I was a little early and wanted to look at the place. I didn’t know you’d be there.”

He took his hand away from her arm. It didn’t seem like he was distancing himself, more like he was done with that gesture. Still, she wished he was still touching her, wished he’d answer her questions without her having to ask. It was silly, and she was glad they weren’t outside where wishing might make it happen.

She took a deep breath, and it was suddenly easier. “You did figure out that I used magic to make you go away?”

He nodded.

“How soon did you know?”

“By the time I was back on my bike and moving. I felt like I had done something odd leaving that suddenly, and then I realized it wasn’t odd at all because you would have been startled to see me there. I guess you’re still uncomfortable being outside with me?”

She nodded at the understatement and reached out to touch his arm, much the way he’d touched hers. She moved her hand up and down slowly, feeling the strength of muscles under his long-sleeved tee shirt. She could feel those muscles tense and then relax under her touch. He looked at her in the way she’d guessed she’d been looking at him before, and she knew he was feeling something. It was strange to know that her touch on his arm could garner such a reaction. It brought back some of the pleasant security from her dream knowing that they were together and both affected at least somewhat the same way by each other.

“Why did you wait outside when you got to my house?” she asked, keeping her hand lightly touching him.

“I wanted to see if I could resist your magic, and I figured you’d try to send me inside. And you did; didn’t you?”

“Yep, and when you resisted, the connection felt different, sort of like when the birds are nervous. I hadn’t noticed that before when we practiced, or any time I remember.”

“Could you always feel that with the birds?”

“No, I’ve been getting better at it.”

Xavier smiled and let out a small laugh.

“What?” Lily asked.

“I guess I have a bird brain,” he said.

She shoved him very lightly with the hand already on his arm. “I couldn’t tell you before, but Dr. Lebowski glows.”

Xavier was suddenly serious. “Did you find out anything?”

“She talked about some people being ‘bird whisperers’ but nothing clear. I’m not sure she knows she has magic, but I think she managed to influence me a couple times. I wish I could practice resisting, the way you and my dad were able to.”

They talked a little more about possible experiments to determine what Rachel knew about magic and to help Lily practice resisting either way, but none of it could be done with Rachel back in Michigan.

Lily ended up hugging Xavier again, and he hugged back. It felt right, and she didn’t want to ever pull away.

After a while, Xavier did loosen his hold. He stroked her hair and back. She moved her head on his shoulder and felt her lips brush against his neck. For a moment, she felt like lightening had struck her entire body.

“Are you sleepy?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

“Then why are your eyes closed?”

“I don’t know. It seems natural, I guess.”

Lily didn’t feel the slightest bit sleepy, but she felt a little like she was walking and talking underwater. It was like the fuzzy, dissociated feeling she had at school sometimes after those dreams. Except being touched, being held by Xavier when she was in this state, was like an inside out version of the same thing.

“What?” he asked.

“What what?” she asked back.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. “You have the most expressive face, but it looks like you’re thinking something you’re not saying.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

She felt him stiffen against her. “No. Just curious.”

“I don’t know how to explain it. It’s something I can’t describe.”

He gave her a quick squeeze and then held her at arms’ length. “We should talk.”

“Sure,” she said.

He let go of her and went to lean against her desk, but he didn’t say anything.

“Do you think we could go for a walk outside and talk?”

Lily grimaced and shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why, because you’d get nervous and send me away?”

“That’s one worry, but not my top one.”

Before she could wonder if Xavier was being intentionally obtuse, the cutest smile crossed his face. It was a momentary flash, but she knew he’d understood and was pleased for a moment.

“What if we went to a mall or someplace where we could walk around inside?”

“You like malls?” Lily couldn’t believe it. For some reason, she thought Xavier would hate malls.

“No. I’m trying to think of someplace else we could hang out together.”

“Are you worried about what we’ll do in my room?” She heard herself say it and knew she was flirting. She hadn’t teased anyone that way since she’d left Seattle, and in Seattle, she’d meant it only as teasing. Now she realized, she kind of wanted something to happen between her and Xavier, not like in her dream, and not too fast. But her whole body seemed to want something to happen.

Xavier was looking at her. She remembered what he’d said before about her having an expressive face. Could her face show what she’d been thinking? Was it anything like what Audrey had read from her on Monday? And would her desires become less obvious with time?

Xavier didn’t answer her question. As if completely unconcerned, he leaned against her desk, twirled one of her pencils in his fingers, and looked at her without ever glancing away.

Finally she said, “Okay. I’ll ask my dad if he’ll drive us to a mall.”

 

The mall they ended up at was fifteen minutes' drive away, because the closest one wasn’t enclosed. For a while they wandered aimlessly. They stopped in a Lego store and looked at loose pieces in bins. They visited a camera store and examined the features on cameras they would never buy.

Lily paused to look at a dress in a shop window and Xavier said, “If you want to try something on, I don’t mind.”

But Lily had never been clothes shopping with a guy, and it seemed weird. She realized that if she did they’d either be looking at different shops or at least different sections, or the guy would be stuck looking at clothes for her. She’d never thought about it before, and for a moment she imagined Xavier waiting while she tried something on, possibly saying what he thought looked good on her. There was no way she was ready for that, maybe someday, but not right now.

Then suddenly Pete from school was standing right in front of her. He was with a couple of other guys and had almost bumped into her.

“Uh, sorry,” he said. His eyes flashed across her face, and she thought she saw him remember how angry he’d been the last time they spoke. His eyes passed across Xavier, clearly realizing they were together, and then he moved on with his friends.

“Do you know him?” Xavier asked.

“That’s the artist guy, Pete.” She looked to make sure he was well beyond earshot, “The one whose friend jumped in front of a train, so he quit drawing.”

“Is he still not drawing?”

“I don’t know. He usually avoids me.”

Xavier reached out and gave her a quick, one-armed hug around the shoulders. It was nothing like their earlier hugs. It made her feel better, and there was something more real about having him touch her in public.

They moved on. Got ice cream. Decided not to see a movie. Along the way, they talked about school and settling in after moving.

“Is this the sort of talking you wanted?” She asked during a lull, as they looked in a toy store window.

“That’s a very Lily question, you know?”

“It seems like, well, there’s a bunch of stuff we can’t talk about here.”

He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Like magic?”

His warm breath on her ear sent shivers down her spine, and she closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

“I can’t believe I never noticed how much you close your eyes,” Xavier said. His voice was soft, not whispering, but he’d shifted closer to her to say it.

“I think it’s a new thing, with you.”

“It’s new that it’s happening with me, or it’s new and happening with me?”

Lily’s brain felt foggy again, “Huh?”

“It makes you stupid, doesn’t it?”

Lily caught her breath feeling hurt, and Xavier quickly said, “No. I didn’t mean it like that. Part of why I wanted to get out of your room was that I was feeling pretty stupid in there.”

He took her hand, and they started walking slowly through the mall. When there was a choice, Xavier steered them toward a less crowded section.

Quietly enough that she could barely hear him, Xavier said, “Don’t take this wrong, but is something bothering you?”

Lily froze for a moment. It wasn’t what she’d expected. It didn’t seem like a completely impossible thing for Xavier to ask, but it didn’t seem to follow from the rest of the day. Her mind immediately flashed to the dreams she’d been having, but she didn’t think they were bothering her exactly, certainly not as much as they had before, except maybe for the trouble with Audrey.

Lily realized that Xavier had steered her over to a bench near a side entrance to the mall. There were occasional people coming and going, but it was as good a place for a serious conversation as they were likely to find. She wondered what she’d done to make him worry.

“I don’t think anything’s bothering me, why?” She said it softly, but Xavier still looked around, as if checking that no one was listening.

Xavier shook his head. “There’s something that passes over your face, when you worry about being outside with me, when you think I’m insulting you. It’s like the ghost of something serious that you’re not telling me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Xavier brought his hands together and rubbed them. “If there’s something you don’t want me to know, say the word and I’ll try not to push. But what crossed your mind right after I asked what was bothering you?”

Then Lily knew she had to tell him. She didn’t know what exactly showed on her face, because Xavier was looking at her as if she’d been abused, but she was going to have to tell him about the dreams.

“It’s really not what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“Not this.” She looked into Xavier’s eyes and realized there was no way she was going to say this while looking at him. Remembering his comment about how often she closed her eyes, she looked at her knees instead. “I’ve been having these incredibly intense dreams about you.”

“What happens in the dreams?” His voice was as quiet as could be, but there was worry in it. She could tell he was expecting to hear about some sort of nightmare, and she was glad that even if she’d be embarrassed, at least it wouldn’t be as bad as he thought.

“Xavier, several different nights, always around two AM, I dream that you climb into my bed and you're naked.” She said it softly, looking at her knees. But at the end she had to look at Xavier’s face. Now that she’d made herself say it, she had to see how he’d react.

For a moment, the reaction was what she’d expected, a wide-eyed surprise that mostly looked happy if a bit alarmed. Then his face looked questioning again. He put a hand on her arm, and quietly said, “But you look kind of sad when you think about it, not as much now, but before.”

His hand on her arm didn’t feel like it had before. She didn’t want him to take it away, but it didn’t feel right. She said, “Maybe I was embarrassed?”

He shook his head.

“Ashamed?” she said.

“Why?”

Then she knew it wasn’t about the most recent dreams and what had happened with Audrey. “When it first happened, it was the night after I got mad at you. I thought you didn’t feel much for me and had only hugged me as part of an experiment.”

Now Xavier was having trouble meeting her eyes. She could tell he was trying, but it was like he was focused on her forehead instead. “Then I had this incredibly intense dream about you, and I’d never had a dream like that before.” She lowered her voice even more, although their part of the mall was temporarily empty, “I’d never done anything close to that in real life. It was like I took the feelings from that first hug and pasted them in. When I woke up that first time, I felt awful, because something important to me hadn’t meant anything to you, and still I dreamed about it that way. But after last week, after I knew you felt something too, then the one dream I had like that this week seemed a lot better. It’s been kind of strange and makes me worry what I might do with my magic if I’m not careful.”

Xavier had gone pale. Lily kept talking because she didn’t know what else to do. She was pretty sure he wasn’t shocked that she’d dreamed about him that way. He’d seemed kind of pleased at first. But now he looked like he might choke or something.

“When did you say you have these dreams?”

His hand was still on her arm, but it felt rigid, like he’d forgotten it was there. “What are you thinking, Xavier? What’s going on?”

“Please, tell me when. I’ll explain some other time.”

“It doesn’t seem to follow any pattern. But if I see the clock afterward, it’s always shortly after two in the morning.”

“And it started the night after you got mad at me?”

Lily nodded. She put her hand over his hand on her arm, but he pulled away.

“What about last weekend, when you came to Berkeley?”

“Not that night, I was surprised. But the night after, I think.”

“Is it only what you said? The same thing each time and kind of vague?”

“Yeah. Vaguely good though. What are you thinking?”

He met her eyes for a moment, and she couldn’t tell whether he was angry or terrified, but he looked away fast. “Lily, I need to go outside and kick something or let off some steam. Could you wait here for a few minutes?”

“Why?”

He was already getting up. She could tell he wasn’t going to answer, and she was a little frightened by the look on his face. It was tight. His jaw was set. But she still wasn’t sure if he was angry or scared.

He left. He walked out through the nearest glass doors and into a parking lot.

Lily went to the stand by the door and watched through the glass.

Xavier’s fists were clenched. He kicked at a pebble and then a piece of trash as he walked straight out across the parking lot. She was a little worried about him, but he didn’t kick any cars, and he wasn’t walking down the middle of the lane. If she stepped outside she might try to call him back, and she knew that wasn’t what he needed. She wasn’t sure what he needed or what was going on, but she trusted him to come back when he was ready.

It was hard. He walked all the way across the parking lot, and it was a big parking lot. She worried that he’d try to walk right across the busy street in front of the mall. His eyes seemed to be fixed ahead. He was walking to the side of the lane, but there was something mechanical about it. He didn’t move like himself at all. Then he reached a scrap of grass with a sidewalk on one side and a cement curb on the other. The grass surrounded a single lonely old pine tree.

Xavier kicked the tree. He kicked it hard. Lily could tell even from across the parking lot that a smaller tree would have jolted under the impact. Then he kicked it again, even harder and kicked the grass as well. He pounded both his fists up hard against the tree, and Lily felt the impact and scrape as if they were her own hands.

She wanted to go to him, but she knew it would be wrong, even if she hadn’t had magic that might affect him. It was hard to watch, hard to do nothing.

At least she could see now that he was angry. It was slightly better knowing he was angry than worrying he was terrified. She wondered if he was mad at her, but she knew it wasn’t so. She didn’t know what Xavier was thinking or why he was angry, but if he thought he needed to beat up a tree, she trusted him to know.

She watched him kick the tree some more. He’d either already hurt his foot or he was running out of energy, because the kicks were nothing compared to his first couple strikes. There were people in the parking lot and people waiting at a bus stop on the street. Some looked at him, but they all seemed less surprised than Lily to see a young man whaling on a tree. Maybe whoever designed the parking lot left the tree there for this purpose.

After a few more kicks, Xavier turned his back on the pine and leaned against it. His profile was to Lily, making an outline of shadow against the street glare beyond. Lily could feel her insides balling up, wanting to go to him. But she waited. He stared off into space, and she waited.

Finally, he began the long walk back across the parking lot. Now he moved more like himself. It was slower. He didn’t look relaxed, but he didn’t seem angry anymore. He looked forward to the mall, but Lily didn’t think he could see her. She was pretty sure the doors looked dark from the outside.

Seeing their bench was still unoccupied, she went back and sat down. It wasn't that she planned to hide that she’d watched him, but she didn’t need to rub it in his face either.

Lily sat and waited and tried to be ready for whatever Xavier was going to say.

When he came in, he stopped in front of her and said, “Do you want to walk around some more?”

“Are you going to explain?”

“Here?”

“I told you my stuff here, but you don’t have to.”

He sat down beside her, not sitting all the way back on the bench, but very stiff-spined on the edge.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I do,” he said. He turned so he was half facing her and his knee ended up touching hers. He stared at their knees, radiating how upset he was. “I owe you an apology.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, even aside from making you wait through that, I owe you a rather huge apology.”

Lily was silent, as a moment before he said it, she knew what to expect.

“I apologize because I think I’m sending you those dreams.”

It made sense. The dreams hadn’t felt like hers. They hadn’t happened when she might have expected. The first time, and the time when she’d been exhausted already, they’d sort of felt like they’d been forced on her from somewhere else.

Then Lily noticed that Xavier was sitting very still beside her. She realized this had to be at least part of his magic, and he clearly wasn’t happy about that right now. What could she say? His entire understanding of magic back in New Mexico and more recently with her had been so different from her experience. The episode with kicking the tree was something she’d never seen in him or expected. It felt like anything she said would be wrong.

Then she hugged him. It was a little awkward there on the bench, but each of them shifted a bit and it was comfortable. After a moment, she felt Xavier relaxing. She remembered how she’d felt she could melt into his hug, and she hoped he could feel something like that.

After they let go, they sat on the bench for a while holding hands.

Finally, Lily asked, “Why two AM?”

Xavier moved his shoulders in the faintest of shrugs. “Since I’ve been little, there’s always been some time in the middle of the night when I’d wake up and usually remember my last dream very clearly. The timing has shifted over the years, but usually it’s about the same time night to night. Right now, it’s around two or two-thirty when it happens.”

There was another long silence, then Lily asked, “What sort of dreams did you wake up remembering the other nights?”

“Mostly not getting my homework done or screwing up on a test. I wonder if there’s someone I should apologize to about those.”

“Do you think they all get shared?”

Xavier’s mouth opened and then shut without speaking. “The best case scenario would be it only happened to you because,” he lowered his voice, “because you’re magic or connected to me or whatever. But otherwise, I don’t know. It could be bad.”

“It could be good, too.”

“How?”

Lily whispered in his ear, “I liked a lot of those dreams.”

Her whisper did not have the effect she’d hoped for. Xavier looked like he’d swallowed a spoiled grape.

“Xavier, there’s nothing wrong with those dreams. You didn’t expect me to feel bad when I thought they were mine.”

He shook his head. “No, but for the record, the dreams are a little more detailed when I experience them. The problem is, dreams are supposed to be private. What appears to have happened isn’t fair to you and it isn’t fair to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not your fault.”

“If it only happens with me, then it’s probably half my fault. But anyway, I still think it could be good. I mean, my magic didn’t seem very helpful at the start, and you were the one telling me to figure it out and give it a chance. So, at least now you have something to experiment with.”

“Experiment with stopping.”

“Maybe at first. It’s also something I can experiment with blocking. And you can learn to change or control it.”

“This is kind of funny you know, you saying this to me.”

“Yeah, I know.” She squeezed his hand and they quietly discussed what to try next.

 

 

 

 

 

11

Demonstration

Lily didn’t have any unusual dreams that night, which she knew would please Xavier. He’d been very clear that he had to try stopping them first. Still, as she got dressed, Lily sort of missed the weird dreams. Now that she knew they’d come from Xavier she wanted to hold onto them somehow. She remembered how he’d been excited the first time he was sure her magic had affected him. There was something very intimate in knowing Xavier’s magic touched her mind.

She was up early, just after dawn, wanting to visit her murrelets and still have time for all her schoolwork. The house was quiet as she ate yogurt and buttered toast. There was nothing to keep her from thinking about Xavier.

Something very warm and comforting wrapped around her when she thought about him now. It wasn’t quite like a hug, although it included some of the security she’d felt when they’d talked and then hugged in his dorm room. Only now, she wanted to keep him safe and comfort him more than she wanted anything from him.

Xavier had found his magic, and he was angry about what he’d found. Lily could understand his anger if she tried. She imagined how it would seem if she’d known that first night. If she’d been angry at him for manipulating her with a hug, that first dream would have seemed like some kind of violation. It had certainly left her confused and out of sorts even when she thought it was only a dream.

Xavier felt bad about the dreams anyway, as if he’d crossed a line he’d been determined not to cross, as if he’d somehow violated her innocence. Whatever her insecurities, she wasn’t going to get hung up about that. It would have been different if Xavier had sent the dreams on purpose, but he hadn’t. Somehow, she was sure he’d learn to control his magic, and she trusted him to use it well.

She finished her yogurt and took her toast and backpack along to her bike.

It was funny how she could be confident he’d solve any problems he had with his magic, when she had been so insecure about her own. For the umpteenth time, she was glad they’d ended up together. She was glad Xavier had found some magic of his own. Being honest with herself, she was glad to be involved in his magic. She looked forward to when he’d try sending her a dream again. They’d agreed that once he’d figured how not to send them, he should try sending something different. She was supposed to email or text if any dream woke her up around two o’clock.

Reaching the Faber Tract, Lily locked up her bike near a spot marked with red plastic flags on the levee. The flags marked where the bulldozers would cut, making a lowered portion next to the stream, a little past the bike bridge.

Lily made her way to marker 53.25 and out to her bird watching place. The ground was still damp with dew. Lily sat on her knees rather than her butt. Today Willow was out far away while Wispy stayed home asleep. Lily concentrated for a long time, trying to tell if Willow was over the bay feeding and eventually convinced herself that Willow wasn’t flying and diving. She was on the ground someplace far down the bay, and Lily guessed she was at the reclaimed salt ponds. It was enough to know both murrelets were safe and to check in with what they were doing each day. What Lily most needed now was to get back to her homework.

Walking in her front door, she almost ran into her sister who was dressed in pajama bottoms sporting a pattern of shiny stars and bunched up below her knees using rubber bands. Below that she wore mismatched socks, one black and pink striped, one orange camouflage print. Above, she wore a lime green shirt with one of their dad’s gag ties that blinked flashing lights in random patterns.

“What’s this?” Lily asked.

“Halloween, remember?” Rose said a little too loudly.

Lily knew it was Halloween, though admittedly she hadn’t thought of it yet that morning. Her only plans for the holiday had been to hand out some candy to trick-or-treaters while eating the kinds she liked between knocks. She hadn’t thought to ask if Rose was dressing up or going anywhere, but even if she was, her costumes usually tended toward the skimpy and flirtatious, not toward homemade clown suits.

“Isn’t it a bit early in the morning for all of this?” Lily waved a hand at her sister’s get up.

“I’m volunteering at a children’s fair in East Palo Alto at eleven,” Rose said. Then gesturing at her own undecorated face she said, “We’re painting faces,” as if that would explain it all.

“Is this something with those Girl Scouts again?”

Rose turned away saying, “Not only them. It’s growing, we’ve got the anime and art clubs supporting this one.”

Lily felt left out for a moment, then she went to immerse herself in homework.

 

The next two weeks were hard. Audrey spent all her lunch times with the new math team, or at least avoiding Lily. Xavier was suddenly swamped with school work and couldn’t visit. He sent email almost every day, but it didn’t answer the questions Lily most wanted to ask.

Then one Friday in November, Lily and Audrey biked out to the Faber Tract to meet up with Kelly and Max. Instead, they met a police officer a bit before the bike bridge who said, “You’ll have to walk your bikes. We have a demonstration in progress.”

Audrey and Lily walked their bikes forward until they could see a group of fifty or more people standing on the far side of the bike bridge, right by where the little red flags marked the levee.

“Oh my god,” said Audrey, “That’s Pete.”

“And that one’s my sister!” Lily said.

Frozen like statues of people with bicycles, Lily and Audrey stared at the mostly chatting group on the opposite levee. Over half the demonstrators were either middle or high school aged, and Lily wondered if they’d cut school or only recently arrived. There were two more cops standing near the pumping station who presumably would have noticed that sort of issue. The older group of protestors may have taken the day shift and be passing the baton at this point. Lily watched a large woman with white hair and a broad brimmed hat hand Rose a sign that said, “Save Our Wetlands, Save Our Homes”.

Then Rose looked up and shouted across at Lily, “Join us!”

Lily could only shout back, “What are you doing?”

But Rose didn’t answer. She was busy talking with the crowd of girls around her. Lily realized that group, the ones who looked most like middle school kids, was pretty much all girls. Were these Rose’s anime-fan-Girl-Scouts? They weren’t wearing Girl Scout uniforms, but a lot of them were wearing dark eye make-up. Otherwise, they looked pretty diverse, all sorts of ethnicities and hair styles, wearing anything from mini-skirts with tights to black leather and piercings. Rose was the only one so far who’d been given a sign to hold.

The high school group with Pete had brought their own signs and a couple wore tee shirts they’d probably made for such occasions. One tight fitting tee on a sullen brunette read, “Laws off my body! Hands off my planet!” But Pete’s sign gave the clearest picture. It showed the notorious Chaucer street bridge with its picturesque narrow arch spouting water from both sides, while a foreshortened version of downstream barely poured water over the planned dip in the levee. There were no words on the sign and no white spaces. After being grabbed by the central image of the creek overflowing, Lily’s eyes explored the background scene of pouring rain and houses surrounded by water-filled streets.

Then a younger student with tall black boots and a black bow in blond hair unrolled a banner, pushing the top into free hands as she went along. It must have been twenty feet long and was probably painted that morning onto butcher paper, but it said in bold blue letters, “FLOODGATE NOW!”

Audrey started moving, pushing her bike toward the bridge.

“Wait! What are you doing?” Lily asked. The police officer they’d passed before glanced at her but made no move.

“Joining them,” Audrey said. She crossed the creek and locked her bike in the usual place, then went to join the high school aged protestors. A couple of the girls hugged her. Pete pretended not to notice, but it was clear that Audrey knew many if not all of the high school students present.

Lily didn’t know what to think. Had Audrey known about this demonstration? It didn’t seem like Audrey to spontaneously join an activity that might get her in trouble, but watching her talk to the other students, it was clear she fit easily into their group. Was this a set up to snub Lily if she followed across? Audrey had been cold to Lily recently, but there was no reason to think she’d be actively mean.

Then the officer behind Lily repeated his message of “a demonstration in progress” and Lily turned to see Kelly and Max approaching.

Kelly reached her first saying, “Are you okay? I had no idea it was this big.”

Max said, “It wasn’t this big earlier, maybe a dozen moms and grandparents trying to hold off the bulldozers.”

“Audrey crossed over,” Lily said.

Both Max and Kelly nodded, seeing her at once in her cardinal red jacket.

“She supported the floodgate alternative from the beginning,” Max said. “She wanted me to model it, but I didn’t bother because the authorities had already voted it down. Too expensive.”

Lily realized that she had missed major details of this debate, but before she could speak people on the other side of the creek started chanting, “Flood gate! Don’t wait! Flood gate! Don’t wait!”

Lily looked around. There was no one to listen to the chanting except the three cops and Kelly, Max, and herself. It didn’t seem like the best location for a protest, though they soon drew the attention of some kids who peeked over the fence of the nearest backyard. If they could be heard from there, they might attract some attention from nearby residents of East Palo Alto.

“What are we going to do?” Lily asked.

“Let the city sort it out,” Max said. “They were supposed to break ground today, and obviously they didn’t.”

Kelly pulled out her cell phone, “I should probably ask Audrey not to wear that jacket. Even if her point is sound environmentally, our work needs to stay separate from the politics.”

Kelly walked back past the cop, presumably to where she could hear herself speak. The protestors were getting louder with their chant. Rose was shaking her sign straight at Lily.

“Is it sound environmentally?” Lily asked Max.

“Sure,” he nodded. “A flood gate would lower the water level faster and give more control. But the cost to build and maintain would be much higher. There was no way to fund it this year, and coming into an El Nino gives this area an increased chance of flooding this Winter.”

“Couldn’t they lower the levee this year and add a floodgate later?”

Max nodded, “Logically, yes. Politically, you’re less likely to get the good long term solution if you accept a short term fix.”

Lily nodded, not fully understanding as she watched Audrey carry her phone back over by the pumping station, answer it, then shake her head in annoyance. As soon as she put the phone away, she pulled her Stanford Research jacket off and shoved it inside out into the pannier on her bike.

Down the trail, Kelly was waving her arm for Max and Lily to join her. They did, leaving the protestors a much diminished audience.

“Might as well go back to campus, or you can work on your paper at home, Lily. You live close by here, right?”

“Just over the next bike bridge.” Lily headed home, but she had no desire whatsoever to work on her paper.

Instead she opened an email from Xavier that said:

            How about a Circus Arts class tomorrow? Mixed aerial has spaces. –X

Lily wanted to see Xavier with an immediacy that flooded her body. The idea of sharing him, even for a class, with JoAnne and whoever else, seemed unfair. But they couldn’t stay in her room all day and the mall didn’t appeal to her after last time. Practicing circus and actually doing something interactive with Xavier was appealing, and she realized there was an obvious solution, if she was up for it.

                        Would you like to try double trapeze on my rig here? - Lily

He wrote back almost instantly:

            Thought you’d never ask!

They switched to instant messaging, and Lily couldn’t tear herself away until her Dad called for dinner.

 

Lily had rarely tried double trapeze with a guy before. Traditionally, a mixed routine would involve a lot more strength and release moves, but Xavier was completely new to this. Lily started by teaching him how to get onto the trapeze while she stood straddled on the bar above him. It was the same swing and roll up he’d learned before, he had to be more careful when he kicked his legs through, which looked great from Lily’s position above. Xavier was wearing his tight sweatpants again, the ones he’d worn for flying trapeze, and a tight gray tee shirt that still uncovered a lot of skin when he swung from an upside-down pike to a sitting position on the bar.

Lily shifted her feet to stand on one side, and Xavier naturally slid a bit to the other, giving her room. She sat on the bar beside him, facing the opposite way. They were suddenly very close, hips within an inch of touching, but Lily felt pretty calm about it. Since last night when she’d decided to suggest this, she’d been pretty sure she could get through almost anything on a trapeze without magicking Xavier to kiss her. Her images of trapeze routines, even some fairly suggestive ones she’d seen, simply didn’t include kissing. On some gut level, she felt safe. It might also help that she wasn’t touching the ground. She could feel the pull between them, but it wasn’t too strong.

“What now?” Xavier asked.

He looked her full in the face from inches away as if daring her to want something. She said, “Bring your inside leg up to tuck around the rope then rotate until your bottom leg flips over and your torso is hanging upside down.” She demonstrated, which left him sitting on the bar and her bottom up beside him.

She glanced up and could almost read his mind, he was so obviously looking at her butt in an appreciative way. But he swung his own inside leg up and rotated the same way she had. Upside down, they were actually farther apart than they had been when sitting, now only needing the width of one leg each on the bar inside the ropes. She showed him how to swing down, until they both hung by their arms with their inner arms crossed, how to change sides in that position, and then how to pull back up to the bar until they were again seated side by side.

“That was great,” Lily said, “Want to try something harder?”

“Sure.”

“It will involve me sitting on your feet and you on mine.”

“I’ll try to behave.”

“You better, my dad’s watching,” she reminded him.

“I’m sure that will help,” he smiled.

It helped Lily even more, and she wondered if experiments with her dad watching weren’t a bit of a cheat. However much she might want to kiss Xavier, she’d want at least as badly not to try it with a parental observer. With that thought firmly in mind, she had Xavier stand with his legs apart as she slid a little bit back off the bar, until her knees were between his feet and her calves and feet formed a little seat. “Okay, now slide down until you’re sitting on my feet, and then tuck your feet under me.”

Getting into position was awkward, but as soon as he was ready she said, “Now hold yourself steady.” She swung her arms back and hung upside down in a knee hang with her feet safely anchored beneath Xavier. Then she swung back up, “Now you try, and then I go again. It’s called Teeter Totter.”

She was braced for him to push too hard and she expected the move to hurt a bit. She’d rarely worked with a partner who out-massed or out-muscled her, but she knew his feet would push as he came up. Lily prepared to keep steady if he swung himself up too hard. He didn’t. His form was sloppy, but he judged the speed and force well. They took turns swinging back again, and she gave him a little push as he came up, because she knew that made it more fun. He got the idea and pretty soon they had rhythm and lift.

“Do you need a break?” she asked when they stopped.

“Not at all, you?” He smiled, and for a very brief moment she wanted to kiss him, but only with a normal, non-magical sort of wanting.

“Okay, for this next one you mostly need to sit very steady and flex your feet hard.”

The move was called Sleeping Beauty, but she wasn’t going to tell Xavier that. She slid herself into an Ankle Hang over Xavier’s extended legs and guided him to move his feet out and keep them flexed. Then she rested her neck on his left foot and wrapped her thighs around his right ankle until she was lying flat. There was something a lot more intimate about having Xavier’s ankle and foot touch her thighs than she had ever imagined. How many times had she done this move with her sister or other girls on her old circus team? How could it feel so different with Xavier when her body knew that this was just circus? Nonetheless, she could feel an almost magical wanting, not specifically for a kiss, but for something from Xavier, and she consciously squashed it, hard. It seemed to work, but the magical pull between them seemed much stronger than it had before. She forced herself to check position and put her arms out to complete the pose. Then she swung back up as professionally and quickly as she could.

Xavier looked at her, waiting for instruction, and she retreated into the familiarity of practice. “Okay, let’s try all that together, like part of a routine.”

They ran through all the moves, and Sleeping Beauty had as strong of an effect on Lily the second time as it had the first. But she moved on and tried not to show anything afterward as she sat down on the bar next to Xavier.

“Well?” he asked.

“That was great. You have amazingly good body sense.”

He bumped his shoulder against hers playfully. “You’re holding back. I saw moves on the internet that would have us sitting in each other’s laps.”

“My dad is watching,” she teased, although she knew he’d be fine with any of the usual circus stuff. Still, she and Xavier both reflexively glanced toward the living room windows where they knew he’d be, though the reflection off the glass made it hard to see inside at the moment.

“Same thing again or something new?” Xavier asked.

“Don’t you ever need a break?”

“Is that part of today’s experiment?”

“No,” she reacted a little too strongly and Xavier was suddenly straight faced and serious. “I meant, I wouldn’t build in anything sneaky like that.”

“You don’t have to worry so much,” he said.

“Really? Are you blazing ahead with no worries?”

He tilted his head, “You know I had to make sure I could stop the dreams first.”

She nodded.

“It’s only been two weeks.”

“And you haven’t messed up yet, have you?’

“Well,” he looked away, “There were nights I didn’t trust myself, and I stayed awake past two or took a cold shower. But when there’s nothing too pressing in my mind I can control what I dream about. So far no one but you seems to be affected.”

Lily wanted to ask Xavier how he controlled his dreams, but something in what he’d said seemed a little too direct. She was a tiny bit worried that her wanting to know about his experiments could influence him into saying more than he normally would. And he sat beside her with a hint of a smile, like he was glad she’d asked.

“Maybe we should run through that sequence again.”

Xavier nodded, and then they did all the moves again, powerful and smooth, with barely a hesitation in between. Perhaps his legs weren’t perfectly straight at times when they should have been, but Lily felt as comfortable as she had working double trapeze with any partner. As she pulled back up from Sleeping Beauty, he said, “I’ve been dreaming a lot about murrelets, to keep myself from dreaming about you. I even tried dreaming that my environmental science professor assigned a paper about birds and wetlands, but the dream didn’t seem to have any effect on my prof.”

“Xavier, if I say to you while we’re out here that I’m worried my magic might be affecting you, can you get that?”

“Sure, I guess, but how?”

“I want you to tell me about your experiments, and I don’t think I’m wanting it that way, but the connection between us is very clear to me right now. Maybe we should avoid talking about anything but circus until we’re back inside.”

“I’m not worried about telling you whatever you want to know, but I’m fine with waiting until we’re inside if it makes you feel better. Though come to think of it, we wouldn’t be able to prove that wasn’t magic making me agree to what you want.”

Lily sighed, knowing that was true and that this could get tedious very easily. She wanted to hug Xavier and not worry about any of it, but she pushed that want down almost reflexively. “Do you want to try more tricks or head inside?”

“More tricks, please,” he winked at her. They worked for another half hour without incident or unnecessary conversation.

Back inside they both took time to change and wash up before meeting again in the living room.

“Where is everyone?” Xavier asked as Lily entered.

Lily flopped sideways on the sofa, a little disappointed that Xavier had chosen a chair. “Dad’s probably back in his room, but Rose and my mom are protesting by the wetlands.”

Xavier laughed. “They aren’t protesting your work, are they?”

“No, just that lowering the levee rather than installing a flood gate may make for short term savings, but it increases the risk of eventual flooding.”

“But you don’t agree?”

            “I haven’t had time to study it. For now, it’s my sister’s latest thing. Oh, and Pete’s out there, the artist who’d stopped drawing because of the train track picture. I saw him with a sign I’m sure was his own work. It was an amazing picture of the creek flooding. I hope that means he’s okay with art again.”

“If the creek floods or the floodgate gets put in, should we worry that his art might be some kind of magic?”

Lily buried her head with a sofa pillow. “Don’t we have enough to worry about? Anyway, he doesn't glow.”

“What you said out there,” Xavier was speaking more softly now, and Lily had to release the pillow to hear. “When you thought maybe magic was making me tell you more than I would otherwise, I thought about it once I was back inside.”

            Lily sat up and shifted to the end of the sofa nearer to him.

“I think I would have told you anyway, but I’ll admit I spoke a bit more directly than I would have expected.”

Lily tried to stay calm and not cringe at the thought.

Xavier took her hand and said, “It may not even be magic. I felt very connected to you while we were working together, like it was only the two of us and nothing else mattered.”

“But that could have been magic.”

“Were you thinking that, too?”

            “No.” Lily felt herself relax a bit as she realized she hadn’t thought anything like that. “Still, what if my magic somehow makes you feel that way?”

            “Then I wouldn’t feel it now, would I?”

            Lily shook her head, unable to speak. She wondered if this might be the moment for their first kiss, but she wanted Xavier to make at least part of that decision.

            Then her dad walked in with a cookbook in hand, “What would you think of stuffed peppers for lunch?”

 

Rose was out protesting most of Sunday. When she finally came home her nose and ears were very pink, and her mouth curved way down with her black lip liner to accent it.

When Rose plopped down at the table that Lily had been setting for dinner she drained a whole glass of water then refilled it from the pitcher.

“Who would have thought I could get sunburned in November in Palo Alto?” Rose complained.

“Is the protest over?” Lily asked.

“I guess. That friend of yours and the artist took off saying they had a plan, and eventually everyone else got bored.”

Lily wondered what Audrey and Pete might be up to, but she was glad they were at least talking to each other again. She also looked forward to visiting her birds without extra people in the way.

 

On Tuesday, Audrey sat at the bench in front of the library and pulled out her lunch as if there had never been any problem between her and Lily.

“Your reaction looked great in Chemistry today.” Lily knew it sounded stupid, but she didn’t know what else to say, and Audrey had done a very cool demo taking sodium carbonate solution through three color changes.

“Thanks,” Audrey said while ritually disemboweling her sandwich.

The silence stretched again.

“Is the math team over?” Lily asked.

“No. We don’t practice on Tuesdays.”

A flash of heat made Lily resent being forced to lead the conversation or wonder if Audrey felt at all like she should offer an explanation for not showing up either of the previous Tuesdays. But some gut sense told Lily that there was a right question to ask, and if she found it, she could have her friendship back.

“What happened with the protest?”

“Oh, that was kind of lucky,” Audrey said. “I realized Pete’s art supported by good computer modeling could make a powerful presentation. Bringing Pete and Max together yesterday, we made an amazing power point about the benefits of a floodgate. Then my dad called some friends who were willing to put up matching money, and we presented the whole package to the water authority yesterday.”

The full force of Palo Alto whiz kids and rich parents hit Lily like a blow to the stomach in that moment, but she only asked, “Did it work?”

“Time will tell, but the new funding would let the city save face. And the flip side is that they would have been even more open to lawsuits after protests pointing out that the lowered levee wasn’t enough.”

“Wow. Are you and Pete friends again?”

“I’m not sure we were friends before. But he’s a good guy. I can work with him, and I don’t think he’s depressed anymore.”

Lily looked intently at Audrey, waiting to see if she’d say more. Then it was like a connection pulled in to place between them and Audrey said, “Okay, I think he’s pretty much only interested in guys, but he thinks well of me, and I still think he’s cute.”

Audrey giggled, a sound Lily had barely heard since summer. She knew the connection between them wasn’t magic, but it was definitely something, and strong enough to make Lily giggle along.

 

For the next week it rained. Some days it poured. Lily occasionally saw people filling up sandbags at a distribution site she biked past on her way to the wetlands. Nothing at all happened where the little red flags marked the levee. Eventually one of the flags washed away. Lily visited her birds by standing on the levee path in a raincoat and focusing on where the murrelet connections led.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, both murrelets seemed to huddle in their nest. They were there more and more during the especially bad weather, but when it was calmer, Wispy spent most of his time out over the bay. Willow seemed to feed down south most days, though she sometimes flew out over the water when Wispy did.

Lily wondered if she could find other murrelets and sense them with her magic, would they have the same sort of pull as the two she knew? If she went to a known nesting area or someplace where she could connect to other ancient murrelets, and maybe some comparison murrelet species as well, would she be able to tell by magic which pattern fit her birds? When Dr. Lebowski had asked her about summer jobs, was she hinting at something like this? She wished Rachel could turn out to be someone with real answers about magic, a mentor who could guide Lily, but she didn’t think it was likely. Maybe if they ever met in person again, Lily could find the right way to ask.

For the next little while, Lily cast around finding all the salt marsh harvest mice asleep in their burrows. Their connections to her resonated with a sameness, even though she could now find in an instant the mouse who’d come out to her the first time she visited. It was strange to think she’d once had to dig her fingers into soil to sense this. Her connections to the Faber Tract creatures seemed so much a part of the place now that other places were less real by comparison.

She took pictures of the wetlands and the creek high with rain to make her visit seem more academic.

Through the pouring rain, she biked to the Chaucer Street Bridge. By the creek there, her magic at first seemed no stronger than her first week in town. It took time for her to feel the various pulls of connection, and the flavor of those connections seemed different. In the wetlands, she felt the web like a safety net. Here it was more like rigging on a boat, trying to pull her tight like a sail.

She had to touch the wet ground to feel connections strongly. Once she did, it was easy to sort the birds from all other animals. It was encouraging that something she’d learned at the Faber Tract transferred, but Lily was somewhat reassured that her magic wasn’t escalating too much. She didn’t want to be responsible for any great power, at least not now. If she could understand and control what she had, then she’d be happier dealing with her own magic and Xavier’s. The idea that familiarity made her magic more effective at the Faber Tract already gave her enough to think about.

Somehow, the rain kept her from feeling too gloomy. Before mounting her bike to ride home, Lily tilted her face up and let the rain trickle down her forehead and cheeks, into her hair. The cool water purged the warm stuffiness of her raincoat and helmet. It made her feel alive and optimistic. Besides, tomorrow was Thanksgiving, and she’d see Xavier and have four days off school.

 

Xavier arrived at noon with yellow and white corn from a farmers' market in Berkeley. The rain had finally stopped, and his clothes were dry and nicer than usual, tan pants and a woven button shirt. Lily was finishing up two pies, one pumpkin and one apple, wearing an apron over a short dress. She felt like Lily on the Prairie as she finished crisscrossing bits of crust over the apples and Xavier shucked and cleaned his corn.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Xavier said, mostly to Lily’s parents who both fussed over a turkey they had basted with something bizarre that had turned it vaguely orange.

“Couldn’t imagine it any other way,” Lily’s dad said.

Her mom called out, “Rose, aren’t you making the cranberry salad?”

 

Later when they were all totally stuffed and full up on conversation as well, Xavier ended up in Lily’s room once again, leaning against the closed door.

Lily flopped on the bed, too content to care.

“I have something to give you,” Xavier said.

That got Lily to sit up. She smoothed her dress and waited.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again before Christmas" His eyes lit with a bit of mischief. "I might bring you something else when I get back from winter break. But I wanted you to have this now.”

He held a little black velvet box in his hand. Only jewelry came in boxes like that, which made Lily’s heart race with an excited sort of nervousness even though she didn’t usually care about stuff like jewelry. What came out of her mouth was, “I might not see you until after Christmas?”

Xavier met her eyes, “I’ll try. I want to see you, but there’s two more weeks, then finals, then I fly home that Friday.”

“Will you send me dreams?”

He shook his head. “I’ve thought up some experiments to try at home. I haven’t told my dad anything about this yet, because I wanted to wait and explain it in person. If it seems right, can I tell him about your magic, too?”

Lily nodded.

“If he’s willing, I thought I might experiment while I’m there. From what you’ve said, I think he'd be someone who would glow in your magic, and that might be another factor in passing on dreams.”

“That’s a lot of ifs.”

“If nothing works there, I’ll try again here, with you. I want to be careful.”

Xavier crossed to where she sat on the bed and squished in beside her. Reaching one arm around her back, he pulled her close and held out the black box. She opened it and found a necklace with the outlines of two birds, shaped to interlock like two large links on the chain.

“I know they’re not murrelets, but they have sort of that shape,” Xavier said

They looked more like pigeons to Lily, but she could see it his way as soon as he spoke. She imagined Xavier thinking of her when he first found the necklace and imagined herself thinking of him as she wore it.

“Can I put it on you?” he asked.

Lily nodded and sat frozen as his arms encircled her, bringing the ends together in the front. Then he fastened the clasp and slid it around to the back. The two little birds landed softly on her dress, and Lily looked at Xavier, only inches away. Already she missed him.

“Thank you,” was all she said.

 

 

 

 

 

12

Suspicions

Tuesday at lunch Audrey wasn’t even seated as she said, “Guess what?”

“I’m going to fail chemistry?”

Audrey glared disapprovingly, then continued with enthusiasm, “Looks like we’re going to get a floodgate!”

“What? How?” Lily dropped her lunch in her lap, caught up with Audrey's excitement.

“Who knows? Lawyers, politicians, and artists. The power point Pete and Max and I made got shown all around. We got funding. The construction people were all ready to start two weeks ago. Now there’s a break in the rain, everyone’s ready to jump in and go with it.”

“Don’t they need to approve drawings or contracts or something?”

“Not much. This thing’s been bouncing around for years. They’ve done all the drawings and studies, plans and bids. Now it’s on the fast track before El Nino really hits.”

“Last week wasn’t enough?”

“That’s the presoak cycle. What’s the necklace?”

“Oh, it’s an early Christmas present.”

“From Xavier?”

Lily had been trying not to mention him around Audrey, but she nodded.

“That’s pretty nice, but why so early?”

“He has finals and then he’s going home right after.”

“For all of December?”

“No, I think he’s too busy studying for the next couple weeks, and then he leaves the Friday right after finals.”

Audrey looked up from dissecting her sandwich to make big eyes of disbelief.

“What?” Lily asked.

“He’s too busy studying to see you in the whole month of December?”

“He’s in college.”

Audrey exaggerated her big eyes and managed to roll them as well.

“What? Just say it!”

“Is your thing with him exclusive?”

Lily shrugged, suddenly unsure despite herself, “Well, yeah. I mean it’s not a rule or anything, but that’s just how it’s happened. He wouldn’t have any reason to hide things from me.”

“Okay, but if it were me, I’d stop by with a gift of my own. See what’s happening.”

“Oh, really? Has this worked well for you in the past?”

“Dropping by unannounced, oh yeah. Or at least, it worked out better for me in the long run.”

Over the course of lunch, Audrey told a tale of childish, middle school betrayal that solidly convinced Lily that she’d been right to wait on dating as long as she had. By that night, however, she couldn’t think about anything other than Xavier. She didn’t really believe he was dating someone else, but they’d never talked about it directly. They’d never exactly defined themselves as boyfriend and girlfriend. When they discussed school, they talked about classes and workload, not who they hung around with between times. That might have been because Lily’s social life pretty much boiled down to Xavier and Audrey, but she hoped Xavier had more friends than she did. Wasn’t college supposed to be about meeting people?

On the other hand, she didn’t like the idea of him kissing someone else when he hadn’t even kissed her. If he’d been that dishonest about his feelings, then he wasn’t the person she thought he was. But thinking back to his unpredictable behavior in New Mexico, his bad boy persona at school where even his patterns of speech changed, she knew he was capable of lying.

Thoughts of Xavier flirting with someone else, kissing someone else, kept creeping into Lily’s mind. She’d find herself gritting her teeth or clutching her hands as she studied or tried to sleep. On Friday afternoon, she sent Xavier an email asking if they could get together one more time. Her mom took her shopping after dinner and helped her pick out a gift, a watch with an extra dial that showed the phases of the moon.

Lily came home to an email from Xavier saying:

            I’m overwhelmingly busy. I’m sorry. - X

Lily didn’t tell her parents about the email. That night, she couldn’t concentrate on her English homework and she woke up every couple of hours, but not from any special dream Xavier sent.

Saturday morning, she gave into her fears and took BART to Berkeley. Her parents knew she was visiting Xavier, and her dad sent food as usual. But her parents thought Xavier was expecting her. They didn’t know he’d claimed to be too busy.

She walked to his dorm, up to the room where she’d visited once before, and knocked. There wasn’t any answer. No light shown from under the door. There weren’t any sounds coming from inside.

Lily wandered back downstairs, imagining Xavier at the library or studying with a friend. She imagined herself not jumping to conclusions even if he was studying with a gorgeous female friend. Within two minutes of leaving the dorm, Lily found a curb to sit on where she could dig her fingers into some soil. It wasn’t much, but she thought it would be enough to track Xavier if he was outside. After several minutes of failure, and once she’d tired of identifying pigeons and squirrels, she withdrew her hand and dusted her fingers.

Not finding him that way was probably for the best. The weather wasn’t nice enough that he was likely to be studying outside, and it would be a little like magical spying if she used their connection to track him. Her stomach hurt. She thought about going home. But her desire to see Xavier was stronger than ever. Sitting on the curb within sight of Xavier’s dorm, Lily imagined all sorts of scenarios, good and bad, where he returned and found her waiting.

After almost an hour, she went up to knock on his door again. There still wasn’t any answer. Then she remembered that she had a cell phone, and that she had Xavier’s number.

She called, and he answered on the second ring.

“Want to meet for lunch?”

“Lily, is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“In front of your dorm room.”

“Is something wrong?”

She hesitated and he said, “Just wait. I’ll be there in a minute.”

It was closer to three minutes. He pounded up the hall in an un-tucked tee shirt and jeans, carrying a laptop and a binder.

“Hey,” was all he said as he touched her arm and unlocked the door to his room. He waited until they were both inside and she’d set down her stuff before he pulled her into a hug. She could tell he hadn’t taken a shower yet and wondered if he’d even slept.

He asked, “Are you okay?”

Lily felt like she was lying, showing up when there was nothing wrong. He was being nice on the assumption that she had a real reason, something beyond being a suspicious, lovesick high school kid. It was too much to let him hold her not knowing, no matter how much it hurt to pull away.

“It’s nothing bad, really. I couldn’t stand not seeing you all month, and I wanted to bring you something. Can I stay for lunch, and then I’ll let you study?” If she sounded close to tears as she said it, that was real, and she couldn’t help it.

“Sure. Here.” He started moving piles of books and papers off the flat surfaces in his room. He cleared his desk chair and most of his desk. When he noticed his bed was a half uncovered tangle, he quickly pulled the spread to almost flat.

“I’d ask if you’d rather sit outside, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t,” he said.

Lily nodded. “My dad sent pita, hummus, and salad. He also sent pumpkin bread and cookies to last another week.”

“I barely finished the pie and cornbread I brought back from Thanksgiving.” Xavier smiled and Lily felt a rush of bittersweet warmth flush her face.

It wasn’t until they had everything set out and had each dipped some pita into hummus that he asked again, “Are you okay?”

“It’s stupid. I missed you, and Audrey got all suspicious when she heard I wasn’t seeing you until after Christmas.”

“Audrey’s talking to you again? And she’s picking on me?”

“Well, I realized I wouldn’t have a right to be jealous or anything. If you had other friends or even a real girlfriend here, I’d understand. But I couldn’t ask by email. And I missed you.”

She wanted him to forgive her, to say something sympathetic. Instead, he finished his pita in silence.

Finally he said in a tight, small voice, “Lily, I’m not at my best right now. Maybe I coasted a bit too much in high school, but college definitely gives me enough rope to hang myself. I’m way behind, way stressed out, and I didn’t want to take it out on you. If you wait until January, I’ll try to do better.”

Lily nodded. She understood, but it didn’t feel right. “You don’t have to protect me, you know? Isn’t there some way I can help? Or shouldn’t I at least know what’s going on with you?”

He was silent a long time again, long enough for them to eat another whole pita, though Lily wasn’t hungry anymore. Not comfortable looking at Xavier, her eyes travelled around his room instead. It was messy, but no worse that she’d expect a guy’s dorm room to be. A pile of library and other books sat in a corner of the floor as if they’d been there a while. One title included the term “lucent dreaming” and another “self-hypnosis.”

Xavier saw where she was looking. He watched her for a long time, and she couldn’t help but look back at him. There were rings under his eyes. Had they been there last week? Wouldn’t she have noticed?

“Maybe I should have talked to you more.” His voice was calmer now, but somehow she didn’t think he believed himself. “It’s just, if I talk with you about how I’m trying to control the dreams, then not dreaming about you might be even harder. And Lily, it’s hard enough already.”

“So, you don’t sleep sometimes?”

“I have enough work to keep me up late anyway. But it depends on the night. Sometimes I need to avoid checking email and to keep my thoughts firmly on something else.”

“You don’t need to do this to protect me.”

“I do. Or maybe it’s to protect me. Please, trust me until January? Let me get through finals and visiting my dad, and then I’ll discuss as much as you want.”

Lily nodded. She wanted to tell Xavier she loved him or that she’d do anything he wanted, but she guessed that sort of emotion would make him more likely to think about her, and make it less likely that he’d sleep.

He was still watching her, as if trying to read her thoughts through some non-verbal magic. He looked at the necklace he’d given her, where it hung around her neck. Then he looked away quickly, to where she was leaning on her left hand.

Suddenly, Lily worried that he’d see dirt around her nails, know that she’d used her magic to try to find him, to spy on him. She blurted out, “I tried using my magic to find you when you weren’t here. It didn’t work.”

He didn’t react at first. His face stayed flat, almost dazed looking. Then thoughts seemed to click into place and he looked up. “What would you have done if you found me, some sort of experiment?”

Lily shook her head and felt tears welling in her eyes. “I would have tracked you down, just to see what you were doing or who you were with.”

“That’s kind of creepy.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Look, Lily,” he quickly packed up the containers their lunch had been in, “I can’t deal with this right now.”

He said it pretty calmly, but he was standing up and handing all her stuff back.

She pulled out the pumpkin bread and cookies. “My dad sent these for you.” She pulled out the little box she’d wrapped the night before. “And this is from me. You can open it whenever you think best. It’s no big deal.”

“Thanks,” he said. They hugged briefly, but it felt forced. Lily left feeling as dazed as Xavier had looked before.

 

For the next couple weeks, Xavier's communications were minimal and superficial. Lily buried herself in school work and wetlands research. Construction started on the new floodgate in mid-December.

That Wednesday Lily, Audrey and Max spent a busy afternoon photographing around the workers as they finished up for the day. When the construction team left, Max guided Lily and Audrey in measuring every detail of the current construction.

“I’m going to take these numbers back to campus and work on my models. Do either of you need anything from the van?” Max asked.

Audrey looked at her watch, “I think we’re done for today. We both have a big chemistry test tomorrow, and it’s pretty close to six.”

Kelly and Dr. Martin were both out of town at different meetings. Max smiled and said, “I guess I won’t see you until after vacation then.”

“We don’t need to come Friday?”

“I think you should get your vacation when school gets out on Friday, don’t you?”

“Thanks!” they both said, and Audrey added, “Merry Christmas.” Then both girls went to get their bikes.

Once they were alone Audrey said, “If you want to come over and study you can.”

“Will your parents mind?”

“No, but I’ll call and ask.”

With a couple of calls it was all set up to include dinner, and Lily found herself at Audrey’s house for the second time ever. The first time she’d hoped it was the start of a stronger friendship. Since then she’d thought Audrey was keeping her at a distance. She hadn’t minded. It made the sudden invitation more confusing.

In Audrey’s room, they quizzed each other from their own separate stacks of flashcards.

“You’ve gotten a lot better at this,” Audrey said as they finished the first round and each had only a small set of flashcards to review.

“Well, the murrelet paper is mostly finished and Xavier’s busy with finals.”

Audrey rolled her eyes. Lily hadn’t said anything about her unannounced visit to check on Xavier. It hadn’t seemed right on their anonymous bench at school. Now she said, “I did go to see him, unannounced.”

“You did!” Audrey set down her flashcards as her mind changed tracks with a near audible clicking sound. “So?”

“He was tired and stressed. At first he was worried about me, thinking I wouldn’t show up there without some extreme reason.”

“Then?”

“We ate lunch. I didn’t stay very long.”

“Did you bring him a gift?”

“Yeah, a watch.”

Audrey tipped her head side to side as if weighing the choice. “What kind?”

“It has a dial that rotates over the course of a month to show the phase of the moon. When we met in New Mexico there was all this stuff about calendars and the Ancestral Puebloans. They mostly used the sun, not the moon, but the circular dial with notches reminded me of their circular buildings with holes to let sunlight through a certain way on special days.”

“Did he like it?”

“I told him he could open it whenever.”

Audrey frowned at that, but Lily couldn’t explain to her why a constant reminder of her might make it even harder for Xavier to get the sleep he obviously needed. She couldn’t explain how she’d almost used magic to spy on him either.

Luckily, Audrey’s mother arrived with hamburgers and tater tots. She let them eat in Audrey’s room where they took turns making up long answer questions for each other and then taking bites of burger when it wasn’t their turn to answer.

At the end of the evening Audrey said, “I’ll be gone the first part of vacation, until after Christmas, but if you want to do something that last half week, give me a call.”

Lily biked home feeling like she’d already passed her test.

 

The first week of vacation started with Rose in the kitchen dressed like a magazine ad, hurriedly buttering a bagel.

“Where are you headed?” Lily asked.

“Camp!”

Lily didn’t trust herself to respond, or she didn’t trust her sister not to blow up at any response she might give. Instead, she made a silent inspection of the cereal cupboard.

Rose volunteered more after gulping half a glass of juice. “We’re running a vacation camp in East Palo Alto. We’re helping kids from a family shelter and those with parents in resource center programs.”

“Is this something with those Girl Scouts?”

“ _We’re_ running it; that means me to. I’m half in charge of cooking and gymnastics.”

Lily looked at her sister’s trendy clothes and heavy eye make-up and wondered if she could teach even forward rolls and headstands dressed like that, but instead she said, “That’s kind of neat. Need any help?”

“Noooooo. You stay with your birds. This is my thing.”

Then Rose was down the hall calling for dad to give her a ride.

Lily poured a bowl of cereal and plopped down at the table. Her little sister had another cause. Audrey was off to visit her grandparents in Massachusetts. Xavier was in New Mexico and not even sending email. Lily tried not to feel sorry for herself, but the next few days looked pretty lonely.

If she kicked back to read and watch TV all day, she’d ruminate about Xavier. After storming off to question him at Berkeley, she was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. She certainly believed that he was stressed and exhausted when she last saw him. Still, an itch of doubt insisted that he hadn’t really answered when she asked about a girlfriend at Berkeley. He’d asked her to wait until January, and she would, but it was hard.

What she needed was a project of her own to get her through vacation. Rose had told her to stay with the birds, and surprising as it was to get good advice from her sister, Lily decided that was the best direction to go. She carried the remains of her cereal over by the computer and soon had descriptions of different bird species to look for.

An hour later, with supplies for the day, her Stanford Research jacket, and a plastic bag to sit on, Lily reached her usual spot in the wetlands. Without touching her fingers to the soil, she tried to catalog the connections around her. There were ducks, egrets, herons, and even a couple of pigeons. Her murrelets were both out over the bay. Her salt marsh harvest mouse was asleep in his usual burrow, and there were dozens of others like him, almost all asleep. Then one by one, Lily pulled on each connection that she couldn’t identify by feel. The first turned out to be a ring-necked pheasant, a bird she’d seen but not identified with her magic before. Lily took a photo with the good camera then relaxed that connection and pulled another. In the same manner, she called and then identified plovers, avocets, and wrens.

The fifth bird was a bit of a surprise, and she pulled out her bird descriptions to be certain. Although she’d known the endangered California clapper rails were found at the Faber Tract sometimes, she’d never actually seen one. Lily took a photo and identified two other pulls that must also be clapper rails. A few bird identifications later she found a single common yellowthroat, which despite its name was also listed as endangered. After that photo, some noise made her look back toward the levee.

She saw a familiar shape leading a cluster of children toward her along the levee trail. A small woman with graying hair and a vest overwhelmed with pockets waved. She was wearing long pants and a fleece, making her a little bulkier than in the summer, but the shape and the stride clearly marked her as Julia.

Lily hurried over to meet her.

“Lily! It’s great to see you!” Julia called out. “Meet the new Junior Conservation Corps!”

A tiny girl with dozens of braids waved as Julia swept her arm back to include a group of six kids, three boys and three girls. Most looked at Lily with bored, but wide open eyes.

“Were you taking a photo of a bird as we arrived?”

“Yeah, I think it was a common yellowthroat. Could you tell from a picture?”

Lily brought up her last photo and passed the camera to Julia.

Julia brought it closer to her face and then smiled, “I think you’re right. May I show the class?”

Lily nodded and Julia carried the camera around saying, “Oh, yes. This is indeed a common yellowthroat, a bird more often heard than seen.” She imitated a warbling call and continued, “We can tell this one is an adult male by his striking black mask.”

Then she handed the camera back to Lily and said, “Thank you. This has been a lucky morning for both of us.”

“Can I show you one more photo?”

Julia smiled as if Lily had offered to transform into a bird right there in front of the class, “Certainly.”

Lily clicked back a few photos, “Is this a California clapper rail?”

Julia took the camera again and a couple of the kids crowded forward to see. “Indeed it is! Did you take this today?”

Lily nodded as Julia started showing the photo around.

Julia said to the kids, “This may be the first California clapper rail to arrive this year, but soon dozens of these birds will come here to mate and nest. Do you remember back at the interpretive center when we talked about people trying to protect the endangered California clapper rails that usually come here from February through August?”

All but one of the group nodded. Then a skinny little boy in a red raincoat asked Lily, “Are you one of the people protecting them?”

“No,” Lily shook her head, “But I’m helping to study the birds and other life in this area so we can take better care of it all.”

“Do you have any more pictures you care share?” Julia asked.

“Well, I have pictures of the murrelets.” Lily scrolled back to a previous day.

While Julia showed the camera around this time she said, “Over the summer, Lily was part of the Youth Conservation Corps, a group of high school students who were learning some of the same things you’ll learn this week. She found a couple of birds that we weren’t expecting to find in these wetlands. ancient murrelets like these usually spend all of their time out at sea.”

Lily didn’t bother to say that at least one of the murrelets might not be an ancient murrelet. She didn’t mention that the California clapper rail she’d photographed was only one of three already here. Nonetheless, she ended up tagging along with Julia for the rest of the morning. It was a good day for birding, a little foggy but warm. They were able to see snowy egrets, a blue heron, and plenty of ducks without Lily drawing on her magic. At lunch, she showed the kids some of the other birds she’d photographed. Back home that afternoon, she added a section to her paper about the other species found in the Faber Tract with her murrelets.

The days before Christmas fell into a pattern where Lily would help with the Junior Conservation Corps in the morning and then work on her murrelet paper in the afternoon. Lily felt productive and relaxed, but she still wished Audrey and Xavier would come back.

 

The Wednesday after Christmas she called Audrey who was eager to come over right away.

“You’ll never guess what happened!” Audrey said, before she was even all the way in the door.

No one else was home. Lily guided Audrey into the living room as she spilled her story in a rush. “It turns out a guy I knew in middle school also has relatives who live in the same neighborhood as my grandparents. I ran into him at a sledding hill, well, not literally ran into him. We were never exactly friends. But now, he’s grown up and is actually a pretty nice guy.” In a stage whisper Audrey added, “He’s a great kisser!”

That one sentence distracted Lily throughout the rest of Audrey’s visit and even after she left. Lily didn’t want to tell Audrey that Xavier had never kissed her. It seemed kind of pathetic now and sent Lily back to wondering if she should ever have said Xavier was her boyfriend. For the umpteenth time, she wished Xavier could have clarified some things before he left. She wished even more that he had kissed her.

Luckily, Audrey’s visit had also shown Lily exactly what she should be doing with her remaining free time. The finals at Paly, which came in late January, were going to be much harder than at Lily’s previous schools from what Audrey described. Every teacher would expect Lily to remember at least everything she’d used on homework or tests. Audrey said that history and English teachers often expected even more, holding students responsible for everything covered in readings or discussions all semester. Lily threw herself into studying for semester finals.

 

 

 

 

 

13

January

On New Year’s Day, Lily almost didn’t check email; it had been so long since she’d had any. It wasn’t until 3 PM that she found the message Xavier had sent on New Year’s Eve:

Lily, I have a lot to tell you. I can’t possibly put it in email. But I think you’ll be happy with what I’ve learned. You’ll like my New Year’s resolutions, too. Can you forgive me the past few weeks? I’m back in Berkeley on the 14th. Should I come to your place on the 15th? I miss you. –X

She wanted to be furious. After four weeks of near silence, she was supposed to wait two more? Her hands tapped in a search and found the Berkeley academic calendar almost before her mind caught up. Sure enough, Xavier didn’t start classes again until January 17th. How had she not known that? How had Xavier not mentioned it? Even as her head threatened to explode, Lily couldn’t be mad at Xavier. She wanted him so much, on almost any terms, and she was relieved that he’d forgiven her last surprise visit. Instead, her thoughts raged at the unfairness of the universe like microwave popcorn in its sealed bag. In two and a half minutes she ran out of steam and felt slightly burnt.

She wrote back:

I miss you, too. I can’t imagine waiting another two weeks. I think my New Year’s resolution will have to be something to do with patience. I’m glad for whatever you’ve learned. Can you at least email about other stuff now? Oh, and I have finals starting the 17th. They already look awful. I want to see you on the 15th anyway, but that first week might be tough. Practicing patience, Lily

The next two weeks were like squeezing water out of clay. School started up like a rock crusher, with a paper and two projects added on to all the materials Lily was already studying. She taped notes to her bathroom door so she could review while brushing her teeth. If she was a minute early for any class, there were always flashcards in her pocket to scan through. Before bed she’d recreate a math proof or outline an essay response in the hope that her mind would learn while she slept. It felt like her brain was filling up, not like an empty sponge but like a leafy plant that sucked what water it could from the dense soil and tried to grow broader leaves with stronger stems.

If she hadn’t struggled with the murrelet paper earlier in the term, she wouldn’t have believed she could do it. If she hadn’t absorbed some of Audrey’s study skills and work habits, she wouldn’t have known how to do it. Even as Lily amazed herself with how much she could actually learn in a high school semester, she knew that it might not be enough. Audrey was too busy studying to help her, and Lily had no doubt that Audrey would be better prepared for finals. Instead of trying to know everything, Lily aimed to remember what she studied and hoped there wasn’t too much she’d overlooked.

Xavier sent brief emails each day that ended with a countdown to January 15th. Those emails and brief visits with the murrelets became Lily’s only recreational activities. Xavier came up with a plan to bring lunch to eat in Lily’s room, to make a tradition of the pre-finals picnic she’d brought him. However little sense it made, that lunch became the one thing Lily looked forward to.

 

It seemed almost magical when Xavier finally sat across from Lily on the floor of her room. He’d brought a red and black blanket for their indoor picnic. In his bike’s other pannier, he’d packed a Caesar salad and some ham and Swiss sandwiches that smelled like mustard. The brand new shirt he wore was blue and gray striped, and while he wasn’t exactly tanned, the sun of New Mexico had definitely done him some good. There were no longer circles under his eyes, and he seemed relaxed in a way Lily barely remembered seeing or feeling.

Lily wanted to stare at him. She wanted to touch him all the time, to move a strand of hair or brush his hand when he passed the salad. Her whole body felt tense and almost shaky. It wasn’t entirely different from how she felt when panicking about finals, but there was something positive about this feeling, like whatever made Xavier look healthy and sun touched even without a tan.

“You’re quiet,” Xavier said.

“This barely seems real.”

“It does to me.” He took her hand, and she hoped he wouldn’t let go. She saw he was wearing the watch she’d given him.

They ate sandwiches, still holding hands, and he asked, “Do you want to talk about magic or our relationship first?”

“Magic,” she answered, knowing she had to fill in the last six weeks before moving on.

“Okay, the first night at my dad’s house, I put everything I’d learned into sending my dad a dream. The dream was me telling him about my magic. I don’t think I expected it to work.

“Afterward, I woke up, of course. I could have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but instead I went downstairs to get some water. My dad came into the kitchen within two minutes and laughed in my face. He sat me down at the table and said, ‘Son, I should have known all along.’

“It turns out, I’d sent him all sorts of dreams over the years. He’d known those dreams came from a different perspective, and often he’d known it was mine. Evidently, I went through a fascination with horses when I was about four. I sent him horse dreams every night for weeks. He thought it was his parental empathy siphoning through his subconscious. Then one night, he had a bunch of other people staying at our place for some workshop he was running, and in the morning, everyone started talking about how they’d dreamt of horses. With the sort of people my dad attracts, it’s no surprise some of them saw the shared dreams as magic. But my dad was enough of a skeptic to think I must have babbled to everyone about horses the night before and then they filled in details while talking to make them think they’d shared the same dream. Still, he’d dreamt it, too. It made him curious enough that he remembered the incident, but when nothing like it ever happened with a group again, he thought he was right to be skeptical.”

Lily squeezed Xavier’s hand. “Sounds like your dad was fine with it right from the start.”

“Oh yeah, he helped me design experiments. I wrote notes before I went to bed about what I meant to send, and he got up at 2 AM or whenever and wrote what he’d received. The versions he got were less detailed, unless I dreamt about something we’d done together or someplace he also knew. Then he filled in his own details, which weren’t necessarily things I knew or could have sent. And as I practiced, I learned how to control the details that I dreamed better, too.”

“Wow, you learned a lot.”

“It gets better. He invited some friends overnight to see if I could target someone else or if it would affect the whole house. I sent a guy I barely knew a dream about visiting Chaco Canyon, and the next morning the guy suggested we all go there. When we asked why he suggested it, he didn’t know, and we had to fish to even find out he’d had a dream about it. He still has no idea that dream came from me. My dad thought it was better not to tell anyone.”

“Do you think the guy you sent that dream to was at all magic, that he would have glowed in my sort of vision?”

“My dad and I talked about that. We can’t figure out any good way to guess. I mean, other than being weird enough to be friends with my father, we don’t see any reason to think this guy is special. But I can do more experiments in my dorm.”

“You’re comfortable with that now?”

“I’m going to be careful.”

His voice and posture changed as he said the last. Lily was still holding his hand and could almost feel the tension returning. Most of his body still seemed as amazingly relaxed and healthy as when he’d arrived, but now she could see a little tightness around his mouth and feel his slightly tighter grip on her hand.

“Can I help?” she asked.

“I thought about you a lot.”

His eyes were focused on her such that Lily wouldn’t have been surprised to receive a dream right then. But he didn’t say anything more. “Well?” she asked.

“I think you need to tell me what you want, and we need to maybe agree on some ground rules.”

Lily didn’t know how to answer that. “I want you to be my boyfriend?”

He squeezed her hand and warmth flooded though her. “Can you tell me what that means to you?”

Lots of thoughts came to Lily’s mind, but nothing she wanted to say out loud. “I liked the little emails you sent each day since New Year’s. The weeks before that without almost no communication were pretty awful.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was a mess during finals and when I first got to my dad’s house. I’d gotten lost in too many questions, and I thought it would take years to figure out as much as I have now.”

“I could have helped,” Lily said. “I don’t know if I would have come up with the journal idea like your dad, but I would have been more than willing to do that if we’d thought of it.”

“I know,” Xavier said. He tried to pull his hand away, but Lily resisted and he stopped trying. “I know you would do almost anything I ask, but I’m not sure that’s what’s best for you. I feel like there’s some incredible connection between us. It’s both personal and magical, and I’m not sure we can fully untangle the two. When you came to my room, you asked if I had a real girlfriend there, or something like that. The truth is, I could be pretty nuts about someone there for a day or two, especially when I was a little frustrated over feelings for you. But even before I found out about my magic, it seemed like there was too much I shared only with you. It wasn’t simply that I knew about your magic, it was that knowing gave me a whole different world view.

“Being with my dad was good, because I could share that world view with him. In a way, it brought me closer to where he’d always been, but then what I did with my dreams sort of overwhelmed his skepticism. He couldn’t help but believe what I told him about you. I mean, now we know magic can be real. How could I ever again feel close to someone who didn’t know that?”

Lily was stunned. She felt a little left out, like Xavier had developed all these huge ideas while he was gone. Then she realized he’d been developing them before he even knew his own magic, well before he’d talked to his dad. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“You’re going to say I didn’t need to protect you, but I didn’t feel right dumping it all on you. And I didn’t have it this well sorted out before. It’s like I had to work it through for myself before I could come to terms with what it meant for us.”

Lily took a deep breath and tried to let go of some of the stiff tension that had frozen her like a statue. She’d experimented in Hawaii and with her dad for most of a year, and she’d still tried to protect Xavier from ever being outside with her. She understood what he was saying even as she wondered if he’d moved farther in understanding his magic than she had in all this time with hers. “What does it mean for us?”

“My New Year’s resolution is to be here for you, Lily. I have a second one, to always plan for that one dream before I go to sleep. But with the first one, I don’t want you to think you have to be my girlfriend or even have to get along with me to know that you can rely on me. I think that I can promise not to dream at you if you don’t want me to, though there may still be some risk I’ll lose control when trying to send you a dream. I’m working on waking myself up mid-dream if I need to. Beyond that, I want to be a good friend to you, whatever that means, no matter what happens between us over the years. Oh, and I have your other present.”

He pulled a blue plastic bag from the picnic things. It was tied with a gold bow made of stretchy string that Lily slid off the top. Inside was a circle laced across with strings of blue and green, with more string dangling from one side and a few simple beads and small feathers for decoration.

Lily started to laugh.

“It’s a dream catcher,” Xavier started to explain.

“I know,” Lily said. “I’m guessing you don’t think it will catch any dreams.”

“Not really, but we could always experiment. I couldn’t resist. I tried to find one you’d like.”

“I do.”

“I like the watch too, by the way.”

“Did the moon dial remind you of the solar calendar at Chaco?”

“Kind of. I guessed it had to do with nature and calendars.” He looked at the watch without releasing her hand. “I see it now.”

“Some of what you said, you’ve clearly thought it through for weeks,” Lily met his eyes again. “I’m going to need time to absorb it, and right now my brain is full for semester finals.”

“Fair. All of this can wait a week. What would you like from me until then?”

Lily could have sworn he glowed as he said it. She closed her eyes to make sure her magic wasn’t seeping inside and changing all the rules, but all she saw was the dark inside her eyelids. And her body surged with wanting to kiss him, to hear him say “I love you,” to have him say that they were definitely boyfriend and girlfriend. Instead she said, “You could quiz me on history.”

 

On Friday, finals finished at 11:40, and Kelly had given them the day off, but Lily went out to the Faber Tract anyway. She dug her fingers into soil that chilled her at first. Then the magic came and she gave into it more than usual. She let it fill her and warm her. Instead of feeling each animal as a separate pull, she felt herself spread like a quilt across the land with each spark of life a glowing tie through the quilt. She completely lost track of time or the edges of her body or any thoughts that required words.

It was a murrelet that brought her back. One of the glowing ties in her blanket of magic drew her with its familiarity. Its wavelength or shape seemed very familiar but somehow changed. The name Willow came to mind, and she knew there was only that one Murrelet nearby, and yet, there was something more. She searched for Wispy, and he was far, far away. She couldn’t find a sense of direction, but somehow she knew that Wispy was over water and Willow was on land.

The two murrelets helped Lily guess where the bay was and that her own body must be farther on the land side than where Willow was. Very slowly Lily took stock of the glowing life spread throughout her awareness and found a way back into herself. She opened her eyes and felt the wind rush out of her. It hurt to be suddenly small and separate. She was cold like the ground even though the sun shone warm on her back.

She pulled her left hand out of the soil and looked at her watch. It was past two o’clock. She tried to stand and found her knees locked and her legs numb. She sat back and rubbed them until they started to shake.

What had she done? Had she felt so safe with magic that she let it swallow her up? Had she been exhausted enough by the end of term that she couldn’t resist? What would have happened if someone came by?

She looked back toward the levee trail and didn’t see anyone now. Still, this area wasn’t that deserted. Someone must have passed by in the hours she’d knelt there. They’d probably seen her stillness and her Stanford jacket and guessed she was watching for something. But she wondered what would have happened if Kelly had shown up. What if she’d come out and seen Lily with her eyes closed and her fingers clinging to the ground? Could she have returned Lily to her body with a word? A gentle tap on the shoulder?

If Lily’s body was taken to the hospital when she was too wrapped up in magic to notice, would she be permanently cut off once it was taken inside?

Lily forced herself to her feet and started staggering back to her bike. She’d been afraid of the magic before, when she was in Hawaii. It hadn’t seemed that strong here at first, but somehow, it had grown stronger. Or maybe she’d changed. Maybe she’d put herself in more danger by practicing, by becoming more familiar with the glowing, and pulling, and staticky fuzz that she’d been starting to take for granted.

She was about to unlock her bike when she remembered the closer murrelet. Something about it had caught her attention while she was spread thin. There had been the familiarity but also some change. Was Willow hurt or sick? Those words didn’t seem to fit what Lily had felt, but she hadn’t known any words in the moment. It was hard to fix the feeling in her mind now.

She wanted to check on the murrelet, but going back into the field frightened her. Could the magic have a will of its own and be trying to bring her back? Could the magnetism analogy be correct, and she might become too highly magnetized over time?

Lily stood in the sun and took stock. She didn’t feel tired or emotionally wrung out like she had after some of the experiments. She was no longer cold or warm. Her skin felt a little tingly, but not like it did after those dreams or when she lusted after someone on her own. All in all, she felt pretty normal and healthy at the moment.

After a few deep breaths, she walked halfway to her usual spot by the reeds, then her stomach did a flip, and she realized how vulnerable she felt. She turned back toward the levee, but she couldn’t give up now. She turned back around.

It shouldn’t take much magic to check on Willow. Lily didn’t think she could learn much more from a magical point of view anyway. She needed to walk out and find the changed bird. She thought she could probably track Willow without even touching the ground.

Having a plan made it easier to walk back out. At her usual spot, she closed her eyes. It wasn’t as easy as with her fingers in the soil, but it wasn’t hard to spot the glowing lives around her, to identify the pull of the near murrelet. This time, she let herself be pulled.

Very slowly, she picked her way through the wetlands. She tried to stay to the paths Audrey and others used for surveying. Lily hadn’t done much of that herself, but she found ways to go through that didn’t disturb any plants or other life. Checking over and over, she was able to make her way close to the murrelet without even getting her boots very muddy. The murrelet was in a drier section of the wetlands, on a slightly raised area covered with scratchy brush. Lily couldn’t see it at first, but by closing and then opening her eyes, she could see where it must be.

Moving a few feet to one side, she closed and opened her eyes over and over. She saw the edge of a circle. It was black and covered by brush, but the outline didn’t fit with the rest of the landscape. It looked like some kind of drainage pipe, maybe a foot in diameter. Lily circled around as close as she could get on all sides and found a cleared path that led into the brush. Someone must have surveyed here, but the plants had grown in since. Given how clear the other paths were, Lily guessed no one had walked this way since fall.

The little path led up to the back of the pipe. It was easier to see on this side, although the entrance was still covered with fairly thick vegetation. Lily held the connection to her murrelet tight. She could feel the pull fade and diffuse a bit with what she’d learned to think of as nervousness. The bird had noticed her approach. She tried to keep the connection calm on her end, to let the somehow changed bird know that it was the same old Lily.

She thought she’d have to touch the ground to really calm the murrelet with magic. Looking at the tangle of bushes, Lily knew she’d have to put her face on the ground to even see into the pipe. Before she could ask herself the question, it was decided. She’d let her magic get out of control earlier, but she’d had plenty of practice the last few months. There was no reason she should be afraid of this. Being afraid might scare Willow. What Lily wanted more than anything right now was to know if that bird was okay.

She wished for a flashlight and then realized the cell phone in her backpack could provide light and even take a picture. She didn’t want to call the bird out to her until she was sure it wouldn’t be hurt by walking. Instead, she’d help it feel safe enough to let her take a picture.

Lily crouched down on the ground with her camera in her right hand and let the fingers of her left sink into the ground.

Willow glowed close and bright. It was brighter than she remembered, and for a moment Lily wasn’t sure if her earlier experience with magic had changed her. Then she felt the familiar tug of her salt marsh harvest mouse, asleep in a burrow nearby. It was the only other glow in this clump of bushes at the moment. The mouse felt completely right and exactly the way it always felt when asleep. Lily thought it might be aware of her presence as well on some level, but it had none of the nervousness of the murrelet.

She focused in on the murrelet. Its glow seemed distorted, not only brighter than usual, but lopsided. Lily imagined a broken wing or leg, perhaps partially severed, hanging on the ground. Would that distort the glow of an animal? Lily kept her breathing steady and didn’t let herself panic. The bird had calmed down since Lily put her fingers in the soil; Lily needed to keep the connection stable as she brought her cell phone in line.

She lowered her face to where her forehead touched the ground. There was a gap in the shrub that the murrelets had clearly used to enter this place. There were a couple of feathers that had been pulled out, and Lily made a mental note to take one back for research. She used her right hand and cell phone to block the sun and waited while her eyes adjusted to the dimness beneath the plants and pipe.

She could see her murrelet but not well enough to see if it was hurt. She moved her cell phone to light inside the pipe but not directly on the bird, and she turned it on.

The murrelet visibly startled for a moment. The blur in the connection with Lily lasted several seconds longer. Then Lily dared to move the light slowly along the ground toward the murrelet. She stopped where the bird’s feet should have been and saw it was sitting on a pile of dried grasses that could easily be imagined to be a nest.

Lily’s heart thumped. She suddenly knew it was a nest, and the change she had felt and seen meant there was an egg in that nest. She was relieved and happy for her birds. She wished there was a way to share the emotion through her link with Willow, but there wasn’t. The bird felt safe enough with Lily and her unusual shining light, but that was all.

Lily took a picture, and the bird put up with the flash. Lily took another picture, and another. Then she dared to pull a little on the murrelet with her magic. She pulled for it to come to her but stopped as soon as Willow stood up. She snapped another picture and checked what she had. Her picture showed the egg. Lily wished she’d used the better camera, but she didn’t want to disturb the bird any further.

She kept the link as constant and reassuring as she could as she backed off and made her way across the wetlands to her usual spot. She tried very hard to keep track of where the nest was. First she triangulated off landmarks like she’d learned in New Mexico. Then she watched very closely and kept track of the paths she followed between plants. She wanted to be able to lead people back here without using magic.

It was only when she returned to the levee that Lily remembered the feathers by the entrance to the pipe. She didn’t think it would upset the murrelet if she came back. She didn’t need to spy and take photos this time. Anyway, it could be a test of her ability to find the nest without magic.

Lily released her connection to the murrelet and the vague sense she’d maintained of other pulls around her. She made her way back into the wetlands without using magic to guide her and found the path leading to the pipe quite easily. At that point she did reach out and connect to the bird and also her mouse. They were both a little nervous, probably having heard her and not been sure who it was. She wondered if they could recognize her when she intentionally broke the connection between them. From their nervousness, she was sure it confused them at least, and she felt a little bad about that.

She crept back to where the two feathers were. One she collected carefully into a small plastic sample bag. The other she moved to the front of the tangle of bushes, and made sure it was well enough snagged to not drift away. It might help her to explain how she’d found the nest. She could claim the bigger murrelet flew in there when she was nearby and then she’d come in close to investigate.

Of course, it would seem less suspicious if someone else could discover the nest. If they were surveying this area in the next few days, maybe someone would see the feather and look closer.

Then Lily had an idea. If Audrey found the nest, maybe she wouldn’t be jealous of Lily’s luck with the birds. Maybe she could have her name on the paper as well. Lily wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do, but she took a stick and she scuffed out her footprints to make the last bit of path looked undisturbed. Then she walked back to her bike once more, adding to her mental map of the place as she went.

 

It was past three when Lily got home. She was starving and a little muddy, but the plan she was forming demanded that she have free time before it got dark. She showered quickly then ate a sandwich while she glanced through the first math homework for the new semester.

Then she texted Audrey:

Any chance you want to meet at the Faber Tract? I have some free time.

Audrey texted back:

                        Maybe for a little while.

Lily sent:

            Great! Can you bring your survey stuff?

Lily shoved a couple of granola bars into her pocket and got back on her bike. She reached the Faber Tract before Audrey did.

Audrey arrived on her bike. Her hair was back in a braid like it had been during the summer, rather than down like she wore it at school.

Lily couldn’t help smiling, but hoped it would fit with her story. “Hey, Audrey!”

“Hi, Lily. How are you?” She tilted her head with a little concern. She must be suspicious, since Lily had never called her out here like this.

Lily tried to believe her own story as she said, “I was out here and saw one of the murrelets take off toward the bay. I thought maybe I could find the area on your sampling map and see if you’d covered it yet.”

“Do you think it will come back to the same place?”

“I don’t know. But I thought there might be feathers or something to find. I’d like to have something new to show Professor Lebowski when she comes.”

“You could expand your paper instead.” Audrey’s tone was serious, like a parent or a not very fun teacher, but Lily didn’t want to argue.

“I’ve been working on it, but I need some time out here. Help me look for a little bit? You can probably get part of your work done if you haven’t mapped and sampled the area yet.”

“Are you sure you know where it was?”

“I think so. I tried to triangulate with the rise and the levees back here.”

Audrey unrolled her charts, and it was harder than Lily had expected to correlate with where she’d been.

“You didn’t break up with your boyfriend, did you?” Audrey broke Lily’s concentration with her question.

For once, Lily hadn’t thought much about Xavier, since her afternoon took its unexpected turn. Now she was eager to email him about the birds, and more importantly, he should know how she almost got lost in the magic. But if she told him, he might feel worse about his own magic, and he’d seemed well settled with it last weekend. It was all too complicated to think about now, and Audrey was looking at her too closely, waiting for an answer.

“No, I’ve only seen him once this month because of finals and our different vacation schedules, but he’s been sending me messages every day.”

Audrey nodded and looked back at the map, really an aerial photograph of the area with a grid and some symbols drawn in. “Where was it?”

Lily was ready. “I usually watch from here, but I was up on this levee watching over here.” She pointed to almost the right place. “The bird flew over this line of vegetation. I think it must have taken off from about here.”

She pointed very close, but not exactly, to where the nest was.

Audrey said, “Well, I haven’t surveyed that area yet, and I need to do a quadrat here and here.”

The quadrats selected for sampling were already marked, and Lily saw that neither of them included the nest. But one of them was pretty close.

“Great. I’d offer to do one, but I know you and Kelly want to keep the observer consistent. Maybe I can look around nearby.”

“You have to stay completely on the paths though.” Audrey sounded like a stern mother again, but Lily found she didn’t mind.

“I’ll be careful.”

They headed out. Lily let Audrey lead, since she thought she knew the way better. Still, Audrey had to consult her chart as they drew close, and Lily suggested a path that would take them near the feather. Audrey preferred a different route.

Lily tried to pull on a little of her magic as they walked, just enough to reassure her murrelet and harvest mouse that she was part of the noises nearby. The mouse was asleep again, but the murrelet was easy to find, close and increasingly familiar.

“I’ll start here,” Audrey said. As she took bearings and spread her metal quadrat frame on the ground, Lily moved away to where she could touch the soil unobtrusively. She used a little more magic to locate the second murrelet. It was still out over the water.

Lily wandered a bit, making an honest effort to look for anything interesting. She found some sort of burrow and took pictures with her good camera. Then she figured where she could position herself such that Audrey would have to walk right by the feather she’d planted. A little beyond it, she found some fuzzy white fungus she’d never seen before. She took a couple photos then called out, “Audrey, can you look at this when you get a chance?”

“Wait, I’m counting.”

Lily knew they should be quieter in the field. She was glad Audrey didn’t comment on it. Meanwhile, she’d kept her magic open to the little pulls around her. There weren’t as many birds this afternoon as in the early mornings, but Lily hoped keeping her magic present would make them less nervous about the noisy humans in their midst. Lily didn’t notice any of the connections seeming especially shaky after she and Audrey called back and forth. She wondered if any of the animals felt connected to each other in this magical way, and if they ever sent each other dreams. It was amazing to Lily how comfortable she’d become with the idea of magic. Suddenly her comfort level seemed creepy. She wondered if she would still feel this comfortable when she was inside her home and cut off from the magic that had seduced her earlier. Somehow, she doubted it.

Nonetheless, she kept her magic net open for now. She wanted Audrey to find the murrelet nest, but she didn’t want to frighten any other animals in the process. It only took a few more minutes until Audrey gathered up supplies from her first quadrat and came over to see what Lily was looking at.

“It’s just fungus,” Audrey said. She hadn’t noticed the feather even though she’d walked right by it.

“Does it belong here?”

“Probably. The wetlands are wet. That bit is probably sheltered enough that the spores didn’t get washed away or get too much direct sunlight.”

“Did you find fungus like it in any of your quadrats?”

“Not yet, but I’ve only done a couple dozen. I should go do the other one near here.”

“Okay, but help me look for signs of the murrelets, too.”

“I’m looking,” she said, as she walked right by the feather again.

Lily decided it was now or never, “Look!” She pointed to the feather Audrey had passed by.

Audrey stopped and turned back. “You think that’s from a murrelet?”

“It might be.” Lily pulled out a sample bag and collected it. “Help me look around a bit here?”

Audrey bent down and looked. Soon enough she followed the little path that led to the pipe. Lily was surprised at how quietly Audrey could move. She didn’t startle the murrelet or mouse until she bent down to look in the pipe. Lily did her best to reassure both animals when they finally reacted. The mouse went right back to sleep. Then Audrey was standing up and waving for her to come, and Lily knew she’d seen the bird in the pipe.

As Lily crept up close she could see Audrey looking around, trying to find a way to make room for Lily without stepping on any vegetation. There was no good way, unless Lily backed up to let Audrey pass. Instead, she pretended to guess what Audrey was excited about. She mouthed the word “mur-rel-et,” and Audrey nodded and then shrugged and smiled.

Lily silently handed her the good camera.

Audrey looked surprised for a moment and then crouched down again to set up for a picture. There was no hesitation about letting her face and the camera touch the ground.

Lily put her hand over her eyes as if she was rubbing them, in case Audrey looked her way. She closed her eyes to see the glow of the murrelet and tried to pull enough to make the bird rise off its egg for a moment. She heard the camera click three times. Her connection to the murrelet became very unclear as the bird startled at the flash. Lily stopped pulling and tried to stabilize a calm connection as she uncovered her eyes.

Audrey crept over to her and whispered in her ear, “I think it might have an egg in there.”

The breath on Lily’s ear triggered some of the same reaction it had when Xavier whispered to her. It blended into Lily’s general happiness in the moment as she tried to look surprised about the egg and reached for the camera.

Audrey passed it to her and they reviewed the last three pictures. One of them seemed to show an egg in a nest. It would be much easier to tell on a large computer screen.

Lily picked her way back to the main path.

Audrey followed behind and then whispered again, “Don’t you want to see for yourself?”

“I don’t want to upset the bird.”

“It didn’t mind until I took pictures. You have to go see.”

Lily crept back and looked at the murrelet again. She didn’t use any extra light this time, but it was a little easier to see inside the pipe now than when the sun was more directly overhead. Lily felt her connection to the bird and was once again filled with excitement about the egg. Willow looked back at her, calm within her magic. Then Lily went carefully back to Audrey.

Audrey led her farther down the path, then she said softly, “Do you think we should call Kelly?”

“Yeah, I guess we should. This is amazing.” Lily hoped she sounded as surprised as she should. She didn’t have to fake being excited. Her connection to the bird was still there in the background, and she felt almost connected to the egg. There were people she and her sister called aunts, even though they weren’t really relatives but close friends of her parents. In some way, she felt like an aunt to that egg.

Audrey walked quickly back to the levee and pulled out her phone. “Do you want to call?” It was clear she knew Lily didn’t like talking on the phone and would be excited to do it herself. Lily guessed she was offering to be nice.

“Go ahead. You found the nest.”

When Audrey called Kelly, there was lots of confusion, excitement, and explanation. It culminated in both Audrey and Lily biking to Lily’s house to upload the photos from the camera and send them at full resolution to Kelly. Lily also sent a copy to Xavier. By that point, all of Lily’s family was huddled around the computer to look at a screen size photo that clearly showed part of the egg.

“That’s an amazing photo!” Lily’s mom said to Audrey.

“You could put that in National Geographic!” her dad said.

“Yeah, that’s _amazing_ ,” Rose said. Then she cranked up her iPod and went to sit on the sofa.

Her dad touched Lily’s shoulder, “Let’s celebrate. I think we have some Martinelli’s.”

A few minutes later dad brought everyone champagne glasses with sparkling cider, and they toasted Audrey, Lily, and the egg.

 

That night, Lily was up late typing a new section for her murrelet paper about nesting. She was still very excited about finding the egg and managing to help Audrey find it again. Audrey had promised to write up her observations as well. But Lily began to worry a bit as she reviewed research papers and determined that ancient murrelets almost always laid two eggs. Then she researched other murrelets, and they all seemed to lay single eggs. How could her birds look so much like ancient murrelets but behave so differently?

Most of the papers said murrelets tended to abandon the nest if an egg was tampered with. Lily suspected she could get around that with magic, but she wouldn’t do it solely to satisfy her curiosity. If Lily’s New Year’s resolution was to learn patience, then she could wait to see whether the birds took their chick to sea right after it hatched, the way ancient murrelets did. She’d have to make sure her magic didn’t tempt the birds to stay if they needed to feed their baby at sea.

As she worked, Lily’s prediction that she’d feel worse about the day’s magic played out. It crept up on her over the course of the evening, the fear that she might have lost herself and died out in the wetlands rather than lucking out and finding that egg. Or maybe she’d been drawn by the magic to find the egg, an idea that also creeped her out a bit. She thought back to her talk with Xavier about influence and compulsion. Then she thought about how she’d manipulated Audrey into finding the egg, which seemed to have been a good thing, but was it really different from how the magic might have led her to the initial discovery?

She couldn’t write to Xavier about that day’s magic. It was something they could only discuss in person, and she didn’t think he could hurt or lose himself that way in his dream experiments. Not that she knew much about his magic. A shiver of worry ran down her back. But she’d sent him an email telling about the egg and was hoping to see him over the weekend, though he hadn’t said when yet. That would have to be soon enough.

Her fingers were poised above the keyboard, but Lily realized she’d stopped typing her paper and totally lost track of what she was explaining. She tried to make herself focus with the promise of checking email after she finished.

It still took her a couple of hours and probably wasn’t her best work. But at close to midnight, she checked her email. There was a note from Xavier sent minutes before:

I guess there won’t be any experimenting tonight, because I’ll be up working past two. Very cool about the egg. I suspect there’s more of a story about how Audrey found it than you put into email, but I can wait to find out about that. I’m going to sleep in, but should I visit tomorrow afternoon? – X

Lily fell asleep thinking she’d dream about Xavier even if he wasn’t sending anything.

 

By the time Xavier arrived at two the next afternoon, Lily had thought about what she wanted to tell him. They’d planned to try trapeze together again, and she was already dressed in her leotard and tights, but she dragged him back to her room to talk first.

“Finals go okay?” he asked, giving her a quick hug.

“I hope so. Either way, they’re over. What kept you up late last night?”

“I started on a paper and wanted to finish.”

“Not trying to avoid dreaming then?”

“Not really. None of my experiments seem to do anything anyway. I’m back to thinking I can only send dreams to people who glow for you. Maybe my dad’s friend was more special than I thought.”

He slumped against her windowsill, clearly disappointed.

Lily moved closer and took both his hands. “You could try sending me more dreams, ones you choose to send,” she added quickly.

“I was waiting until you were done with finals to ask about that, but I have to warn you, they’re probably going to be boring.”

“This is a test, this is only a test…” she parodied the voice on the emergency broadcast system in a nasal monotone.

Xavier smiled and pulled her close.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

They stood for a while, not quite hugging, but as close as they could be.

“Last week you said you wanted me to be your boyfriend. Oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve ever officially been someone’s boyfriend. What did you have in mind?”

Lily snuggled in closer. “Well, this is definitely part of it.” He gave her a squeeze that sent tremors though her entire body. She went on, “I guess I want to know if I should say you’re my boyfriend if someone asks and whether you’d say I was your girlfriend.”

When she didn’t say anything more for a while, Xavier said, “Is that your way of asking if we’re exclusive?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s something else I thought about over vacation. I’d like to say my only doubts revolved around not wanting you to be tied down when you should still have time to explore.”

“But?”

“I don’t know. Right now, I can’t imagine telling anyone else about my magic or being close to anyone who doesn’t know. But I’m not sure that will never change.”

Lily stretched away a bit to see Xavier’s face without losing contact, “What if we say we’ll tell each other first if we don’t want to be exclusive anymore?”

A smile lit up his face. “Very reasonable. Now what can we do about the outdoors issue?”

Lily sighed.

“You don’t need to protect me on this,” Xavier said. “I think I can resist as long as I know exactly what you want the rules to be. Remember, I want to be here for you.”

“I’m not sure here, in my room, is the safest place anymore either.” She pulled in close to let him know she was teasing.

He ran his hand through her hair and raised goose bumps all over her body.

Lily suggested, “What if we just say nothing outdoors or in dreams that hasn’t happened for real, indoors first?”

Xavier’s mouth opened, a little stunned, which was about how Lily felt, but he replied in a particularly Xavier way. “That’s concise, and I’m assuming that indoors, in person, you’ll be sure to tell me what’s okay.” He paused and waited for Lily’s nod. “And I’ll tell you, I’m going to be even more careful in dreams than in person. I intend to be careful with you, very careful.”

“You don’t need to be that careful.”

“I want to be. Will you let me?” His forehead wrinkled, like this question was more important than she knew.

“Okay.”

He ran his fingers through her hair, brushing it back, and kissed her behind the ear. Lily’s body seemed to melt, and words were as absent as when she’d lost herself in the magic.

“There’s something I still need to tell you,” Lily managed after a while.

Xavier pulled back a little, keeping a hand on her back.

“Before I found the egg, I had sort of lost myself in the magic out there. I don’t know if it happened for a reason, like to help me find the egg, or if I was less cautious somehow. But I was spread so far and sensing so many little glows that I didn’t know where my own body was. That’s when I found the murrelet that I recognized as familiar but somehow changed. From there I found my way back to my body, but it had been two hours. I don’t know if someone coming up and talking to me during that time would have pulled me back, or if they would have thought I was catatonic. I don’t know what would have happened if an ambulance took my body away and I couldn’t find it again.”

Xavier pulled her close. She shivered, and he said, “That must have been frightening. Have you tried again since then?”

“Yeah, I had to figure out about the egg, and everything went fine.”

He stroked her back until she relaxed.

“Is there any way I can help? Do you want to experiment with it or just try to avoid going too far?”

“Maybe I’ll want to experiment sometime. For now, it’s enough that you know for my sake and in case there’s some danger like that with your dreaming.”

He smiled and said, “You’ll have an excuse to come check on me if I don’t keep in touch every day.”

“Am I asking too much?”

“Honestly, it’s hard not to write to you more. I have to force myself to finish other work first. If you didn’t hate phones, and we didn't have to be careful to keep discussions of magic secret, you’d be a serious threat to my studies.”

Lily hugged him around the neck. “I’m glad to hear that! I thought it was just me.”

He hugged back and lifted her off her feet. “Shall we go outside for circus now?”

They went out to the trapeze bar. Despite a cool damp breeze, afternoon sun lit Lily’s backyard. After some warm up exercises, Lily guided Xavier through the sequence they’d practiced before. There was something about the way their bodies worked together now. The constant touch that had been distracting before seemed electrifying now. Teeter Totter, where they both sat on each other’s feet, still seemed rather intimate, but Lily didn’t fear what her magic might do. Somehow, as they shared each move on the double trapeze, they became two parts of one whole. Lily added onto the routine until the ending looped into the beginning and they went through again and again.

 

 

 

 

 

14

The Egg

Monday morning was better than usual. Lily didn’t remember her dreams and knew Xavier hadn’t sent one yet, but she was excited about how things were going with Xavier and about the murrelets' egg. Somehow, math, science, and English seemed better knowing that her murrelets were nesting and were going to have a chick soon. Thinking about her birds was becoming almost as distracting as the days she’d been turned on by Xavier’s dreams. Instead of noticing her classmates posturing too much, she’d stare at her book or notes and not see the writing. The noise of the classroom or even the teacher talking barely penetrated her plans and calculations regarding her birds.

She wanted to go back and check her notes, but she was pretty sure all murrelet eggs took slightly over a month to hatch. Ancient murrelet eggs took 33-36 days. She was sure the egg hadn’t been there during winter vacation. There were too many times when she’d sensed both murrelets away from the Faber Tract. While murrelets were known to take turns on a nest, they rarely left an egg unattended. That made Lily confident the egg was laid during her first three weeks back at school, when she hadn’t been at the wetlands as much, and had never happened by when both birds were gone. Still, January was very early for ancient murrelets, or most related species, to lay eggs. She’d seen dates ranging from February to April, though the earlier dates tended to be in warmer nesting areas, and Palo Alto would count as very warm for murrelets. The timing was also probably tied to food supplies, and the reclaimed salt ponds might make that more consistent. Still, if the egg was laid any time during those three weeks, the chick should hatch in February.

Lily’s reverie was interrupted by the bell, and she tried to fill in what scraps she could remember from where her notes left off.

At lunch, she was eager to see Audrey and talk about the egg. It seemed the crowds in the halls and the knots of people whispering together were intentionally stealing her lunchtime. But Lily did her best to rush through. When she reached the bench where she usually ate lunch, Audrey was busy writing flashcards and didn’t even look up.

Lily glanced and said, “More chemistry?”

Audrey nodded. “Were you happy with your score?” Their chemistry final for first semester had been handed back that morning, though the teacher had launched right into a new lesson.

“I got a 92%.” Audrey bit her lip, and Lily added, “That’s way better than I would have gotten without knowing you. I bet you got 100%.”

“Not quite.” Audrey shrugged and finished what she was writing on a new flashcard.

“Well, I’m glad you helped me.”

“I’m glad you called me out to look for those birds Friday. I emailed you my write-up this morning. Finding that egg was one of the best moments of my life.”

Lily didn’t know whether Audrey meant it; she said it matter of factly while tidying her stack of flashcards. Still, it made Lily smile and lean forward, “I’ve been thinking about the egg all day. I wish we knew when it would hatch.”

“Yeah, too bad we don’t have a little egg sonogram machine.”

 

Tuesday night, Lily finally had another dream from Xavier. It wasn’t as clear or intense as the others. It seemed to involve eating lasagna in a restaurant. There were only the two of them together at a small table. Lily couldn’t see the décor or the room around them, but she knew it was a restaurant. She also felt something not unlike their second hug, something secure that swallowed her mind and her sense of time. Then it abruptly went dark.

She woke up and the clock read 2:17.

It would have been easy to go back to sleep with a smile on her face, but something warm and tight inside her missed Xavier and wanted to be close to him. It seemed possible that he’d be nervous to know the outcome of this experiment and that he’d check to see if she sent feedback tonight. She pulled out her phone and texted:

Had a great dream about going out for lasagna. Assume you did too. Miss you. –L

She didn’t stay up to wait for a reply.

 

When Lily finally made it to Stanford the next afternoon it was starting to rain. Rushing upstairs to the snack room where they usually worked, Lily almost ran into Kelly.

“Lily! Great news, Lebowski is coming out Sunday again. I want to go over some sections of your paper with you.”

“I have a new section on nesting, including some observations Audrey wrote up.”

Lily was whisked into Kelly’s office where they fell into the most intensive rewrite Lily had ever done. Kelly wanted to send the revised paper as soon as possible. It was five o’clock when Lily emerged. She felt like she’d taken a whole college level course in academic writing and hoped she’d remember how to do it again on own. But Audrey was gone from the snack room, and her bike was gone from the rack. Lily couldn’t know how she’d taken the news about Lebowski.

 

At home Lily had a long email from Xavier that ended with the request:

Can you try to stop any experiments tonight? -X

Lily went to sleep thinking, I will not receive dreams from Xavier; I will block them and not see them at all.

But she woke at 2:21 with the feeling that Xavier had just left. She didn’t remember the details of the dream, but thought maybe they’d gone out to dinner again. It made her wish for a real visit, for a real dinner alone at a restaurant, silly as that might be. Knowing Xavier would be disappointed, Lily decided to go back to sleep and email him in the morning.

 

Thursday night Lily failed again to block Xavier’s dream. She had only a vague gist of it when she woke at 2:11, and she wondered if that meant she was partially blocking. She also wondered if she was trying her best. It still felt nice to wake up with warm feelings of Xavier. It only made her miss him more, but in the way she’d miss him if she saw him only in passing every day. That got her to thinking how nice it would be to see him every day, and her thoughts turned into dreams of her own as she fell back asleep.

 

Friday’s email said:

            Would you like to go out to dinner for real tomorrow? Six o’clock?

For tonight, same experiment, okay? - X

 

Saturday, Lily took a shower and even cleaned under her fingernails, fearing they’d collected some permanent murrelet mud. Then she did all the girl things she didn’t usually bother with, like blow drying her hair and putting on eye make-up. She had no idea what to wear and eventually settled on skinny black pants and an aqua sweater, which caused her to go back and add a touch of aqua to her eye shadow. By the time she’d finished, Xavier was due any minute. She didn’t think she’d get far on her remaining math, science, or English homework. Instead, she sat and wrote up chemistry flashcards. It no longer mattered when the next test would be, flashcards were something quick and familiar that her excited mind could handle.

When Xavier knocked, Lily rushed for the door, but her dad got there first. He made endless dad chit chat, while Xavier stood in the kitchen looking flushed, probably from his bike ride. Every time he met Lily’s eyes he smiled, and Lily felt her skin tingle and her face warm.

Finally, Lily’s dad drove them downtown. Lily thought that was better than biking tonight. It wasn’t until they sat across from each other in “La Luna Italiana” that she was finally alone with Xavier. The darkness of the dining room, with candlelight making each table a shining white pond, left Lily adrift.

Xavier smiled across at her and said, “I guess this is trite but, you look amazing.”

It was trite, but her face warmed again and she was sure she could feel her heart speeding up. Xavier had biked from BART to her house, which meant he looked about the same as usual, with a gray cable knit sweater and his hair slightly mussed. He still looked pretty good to Lily. “Thanks. Should I say it’s like a dream?”

Xavier winced.

Lily wanted to touch him, but she didn’t know how to reach across the table without being awkward. “Oh, come on. You controlled it. You’re experiments seem to work. Aren’t you a little pleased?”

Xavier glanced right and left.

Lily looked around as well. Their conversation seemed fairly private. The room was quiet aside from some classical music and a few other conversations, but they couldn’t hear anyone else’s exact words. That meant others probably couldn’t hear theirs. “Tell me about it?” she asked.

He spread his hands on the tablecloth, then clenched them into fists. “It’s all I can think about. I swear in the last week I’ve imagined a million comic book scenarios of how to change the world with dreams. I wrote up lots of plans for experiments, but I can only try once a night. It’s going to take a while.”

“But that’s mostly good. Why do you look so sad?”

“Do I look sad?”

Lily looked more closely. Sad was such a basic word, but did she know what sad looked like? There were lines above Xavier’s eyebrows that she didn’t think should be there, and his eyelids looked tense, like muscles were pushing them down and something had to resist in order to keep the eyes open and seeing. But his lips curved up at the corners a bit. It wasn’t a fake smile as much a smile of intention.

It was calming to look at Xavier this closely. She couldn’t remember studying anyone else’s face, certainly not a guy’s, while he sat looking back at her. But he was waiting for her to speak. She said, still watching, “Maybe you look concerned? Worried?”

The words seemed to wipe the expression away. As his eyes widened and the brows rose in the center, there was a sort of longing that seemed to jump across to Lily. She wondered if her expression showed the same. “Are you still upset about the first dreams you sent to me?”

“Yes.”

He sounded serious and sure when he said it. She didn’t want to contradict him, but the words came out of her mouth anyway. “Don’t be. I’m not.”

“I know you’ve forgiven, or accepted, what happened. Still, I wish I hadn’t learned about my magic that way. I wish I hadn’t forced those dreams on you, and I wish I knew it couldn’t happen again.”

“But you seem to be controlling it so well, even if I haven’t quite learned to block.”

“Most of my experiments have been okay, but I had to cut off the first restaurant dream, because I was drifting.”

Lily remembered the feeling like a hug and wondered if that had been unintentional, Xavier drifting toward something more intimate. “But you stopped it when you wanted to, and you conveyed the restaurant, and eating lasagna.”

“I dreamed about ravioli, too.” Lily couldn’t help smiling, but Xavier only looked more worried. “What if we got in a fight again? Would I have to stay up past two every night until I had my thoughts under control? What if I have a random dream about someone I meet at school? Will she see me in her dream and think she’s interested in me when she’s not?”

Lily felt a twinge in her chest when she thought of Xavier dreaming about someone else the way he first had with her, but then she went back a step, “Was what we had a fight, back when you first hugged me?”

“You were upset. I felt responsible.”

“That doesn’t make it a fight, does it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never felt so. . .”

He didn’t finish, and Lily wished he would. She was still watching his face. His expression was open and present, not only his eyes, but his lips that weren’t speaking but seemed about to at any moment. If they’d been alone, she might have kissed him.

Then the waiter brought a basket of bread wrapped in a white cloth. He set a small plate beside it and poured olive oil and vinegar.

When the waiter left, Xavier pulled out a piece of bread, tore off a chunk, and dipped it. His face was neutral, or the way people looked before eating warm bread that they expected to be tasty. He asked, “Do you have plans for your murrelet scientist?”

Lily wanted to go back to the thought Xavier hadn’t completed. She wanted to go back to the moment when he looked unguarded and ready to confide.

Instead, she took some bread. It was warm and tasted as good as she’d hoped. Xavier was watching her now, not quite casually, but not the way she’d been examining him.

She said, “I’d hope to be able to block by now.”

Xavier rocked his head back and then with a sigh said, “All the more reason to have a plan.”

 

By dessert Lily had lots of plans, or maybe one general plan with lots of branching choices depending on how Rachel responded. Xavier had been a great help and seemed sincerely interested in planning it all, but Lily couldn’t get him to tell much about his own week or whatever had been worrying him.

Before taking another bite of tiramisu, Lily asked, “You were saying something, before the bread came, about feeling a sort of responsibility. Was that only about the first dreams?”

Xavier glanced around the restaurant again. “No, I’ve been thinking a lot about responsibility lately. I mean, they say going away to college is hard because of all the new responsibilities. But I’ve taken care of my own laundry, sleep, study time, even some of the shopping and home maintenance, for years. That’s how life was with my dad. But now, I mean, someone in my dorm asked me how long he needed to microwave a frozen egg before he could eat it. Not only had this guy never cooked an egg in his life, he didn’t know to keep them in the refrigerator.”

Lily waited while Xavier finished the last few bites of his cake, but he didn’t continue. “I’m not sure I know where you were going with the frozen egg story.”

Xavier wiped his mouth and leaned forward a bit. “At college, I see people who can barely take responsibility for feeding themselves, and then of course, there are people who hold down jobs and raise kids while attending college full time. But you and me, we have these powers that might do all sorts of things, good or bad, and that’s a huge responsibility or none at all. Because no one knows, it’s up to us to decide.”

The waiter brought the bill, and Xavier insisted on paying. Then he asked Lily, “Can we walk?”

“Where?”

“Around? Back to your house?”

Lily bit her lip.

“We can both handle it now, and I like being outside. Do you remember how little time we spent inside in New Mexico?”

“But what if I make you do something?”

“Nothing but holding hands, until we’re safe inside.”

“But what if I want you to tell me stuff?”

He reached across the now cleared table and took her hand. He was studying her face the way she’d studied his earlier. She felt like the one who would do anything the other asked at that moment. The different kind of connection, the kind that filled her rather than pulling, seemed to warm and relax every muscle in her body. She wondered if she’d feel weak in the knees if standing. This couldn’t be a good lead in to a walk.

He said, “I still think I can resist, but if there’s something you want to know, there’s nothing I’m trying to keep secret.”

Her mind tumbled over all she wanted to know, mostly wanting to understand what worried him, what he’d concluded from his experiments. Part of her wanted to hear all sorts of reassurances that he liked her, things she would never want to ask directly. She did not think walking outside together was a great idea. If she felt this way from touching hands, she didn’t know how she’d keep control outside, especially if her magic was strong anyplace between here and her home. It suddenly seemed silly that she didn’t know. She could have made a map of where her magic was strongest. Other than by Chaucer Street Bridge and out by the Faber Tract, she had no idea. Xavier would have mapped it if he’d had her powers for a week. He’d been talking about responsibility before he asked if they could walk. Did walking have something to do with responsibility? Was this a test he was setting for himself or for them both? Was he pushing her to experiment with controlling her magic? Or did he simply want to spend time outside with her? Now that he’d said it, she did picture him outside all the time in New Mexico, and he seemed to enjoy his long bike rides from BART to visit her.

“So?” He was still studying her from across the table. Somehow it felt very intimate that he’d watched her while she was thinking all that, and that he was still holding her hand.

“I guess so,” she said. And they walked out of the restaurant hand in hand.

For a few blocks, the sidewalks were crowded, and neither of them spoke. Lily tried to keep her thoughts in check. She did not want to hear any reassurances or avowals of love during this walk. She couldn’t trust them if she did. She wondered if she could trust anything to be more than Xavier saying what she wanted to hear. But then she realized how unfair that was. Xavier had shown he could resist her magic when he tried. Also, she didn’t think her magic could control the details as someone talked. It seemed more reasonable to worry about influencing his feelings or how much he was willing to tell her. But he’d said inside he didn’t mind telling whatever she wanted to know, and she was pretty sure she’d didn’t want him to feel anything that he didn’t already feel for her.

Xavier squeezed her hand and looked at her with his brows raised in a question. It sent shivers all through her middle and truly did make her weak in the knees. Luckily, they stopped to wait for the light at a crosswalk, and she had time to regroup. Deciding it would be better to get Xavier talking and follow his lead, she asked, “What were you thinking about?”

The light changed, and they walked across into an old residential neighborhood. The street was dark and empty, although they could still hear the busy traffic of downtown behind them.

Xavier chuckled, “Honestly, I was thinking how responsible you’d feel if you thought you magicked me out here, and how responsible I’d feel for having convinced you to go for a walk outside.”

It was only as he said it that Lily felt the pull of her magic, connecting her to Xavier. But it wasn’t strong here, and she tried to ignore it. “Is that the sort of responsibility you’ve been thinking about this week?”

“Sometimes. More often, I wonder if we have a special responsibility to others to do something useful because we can do something magical.”

“Or maybe being responsible means not using magic, because it’s not fair.”

“Or maybe we need to learn as much as we can about our powers in order to use them well.”

Xavier smiled and squeezed her hand again; she had no idea why.

“Have you always been this big on responsibility?” she asked.

“Only for myself. I feel kind of bad that I’m extending some of those expectations to you now. And the funny thing is, I’m not sure if I’m extending my beliefs to you because we both have magic or because we’ve gotten involved.”

“What sort of beliefs?” Lily remembered how Xavier’s father had attracted followers. Some people had thought he led a cult, but Xavier had said people basically came to his dad for advice. Even with all that had happened, Lily didn’t know much about Xavier’s belief system.

“I believe that I should make the world a better place, or at least no worse. I believe that I should be free to do what I want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, and that I should extend the same freedom for others. I believe in questioning everything, trying to be as open-minded as possible, and taking full responsibility for my decisions and mistakes.”

“Wow,” Lily wondered if he’d rehearsed that. She wondered if he would have told her anytime, and concluded he probably would have if she’d asked. Since she hadn’t been aware of how much she wanted to know until after she heard Xavier’s answer, she was fairly sure all she’d done now was ask. “Did your dad teach you that?’

“Not in words, but I suspect he has similar beliefs.”

“And now you want me to?”

He squeezed her hand again. There was something narcotic about those squeezes. They seemed to disrupt normal control of her body, as if for just a moment she was in freefall, but then she caught herself each time before she could stumble.

Xavier said, “I wouldn’t want you to change anything about you for my sake. It’s more that I feel close with you, because we both have magic and because of what’s been happening between us, that my mind assumes we’re alike. Then I have to remind myself that we’re still very different people, and I want you to be free to do and believe whatever you choose.”

Lily had lost track of what Xavier was saying somewhere around when he mentioned what was happening between them. She deeply wanted to know how he would describe their relationship. She wanted to know badly enough that she feared it could become a magical want. To keep them both on track, she asked, “Could you give me an example?”

“Sure,” Xavier rolled his shoulders and looked out into space for a moment. A woman with a fluffy white dog and a poufy white hairstyle walked past them in the opposite direction, and Xavier waited even longer before speaking. “When I was figuring out my experiments, I thought about how I wouldn’t want to send people dreams that would upset them, encourage them to do something contrary to their own beliefs, or make them worry about why they’d had a dream like that. That last part opened up ways in which I could send you different dreams than I could send others, because you would at least know afterward that I was responsible for the dream.”

Lily squeezed Xavier’s hand, hoping that it would show she was listening and that she was glad she could be useful in his experiments. It didn’t make her feel as strange as when he squeezed her hand, even though he did sort of squeeze back. But it did start her thinking about whether her squeeze had at all the same effects on him as his did on her. She hoped it did, but she also knew she didn’t want to think something like that outside. She prompted, “And?”

“Well, I figured that was pretty similar to the experiments in your backyard, where it was okay because your dad and I could understand. And I figured you must have some of the same ideas about individual freedoms, because you were worried about influencing what I want.” He quickly added, “Without meaning to.”

Lily wondered if he added that because he was having to fight off magic from her now, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t sending anything that way. She could barely feel the connection between them. It was a slight tug, nothing much compared to the fact that they were holding hands. “You’ve told me how you think our beliefs are similar, but not how any of this changes what you expect of me.”

“Well, as I think of experiments I should run and how I should use my magic, I can’t help but think of what you could try, and sometimes I think about it as if I know what you ‘should’ do. And I don’t think it’s my place to think about ‘shoulds’ for you, because you choose your actions based on your own beliefs.”

“You’re saying you don’t think you ‘should’ even think that I ‘should’ make certain decisions?”

“Yeah.”

Lily stopped and looked at him. They were under a street light by a stop sign, about to cross a very quiet intersection. Xavier looked her full in the face, as if she and the conversation had his total attention, but his shoulders and body seemed completely relaxed, as if holding hands and discussing deeply held beliefs didn’t affect him at all. She wanted to ask what he was feeling, if he was feeling anything at all, but she didn’t want to ask it outside. Instead she asked, “Don’t you think most people spend a lot of time thinking about what other people ‘should’ be doing?”

“Maybe. I think a lot of people have a belief system that supports it. For example, they might think no one should smoke or everyone should say ‘hello’ to their friends every time they pass in the hall.”

“But you don’t think those sorts of ‘shoulds’?”

“I don’t do it very often. I mean, I think smoking is a bad habit, but I can see why someone who grew up differently from me might choose to start and choose not to stop even when given more information. And I believe that person should get to choose for himself.”

“But that’s a ‘should.’”

“I’m not claiming my beliefs make sense to anyone other than me, but to me it’s a matter of my belief system to say others should have that freedom to decide, and that seems different than saying others ‘should’ decide the same way I do.”

“And you think that I think this way too?”

“Noooooooo.” Xavier shook his head. “Or at least I’m trying not to assume things about your beliefs being similar to mine. But I feel very separate from most people around me. With you, I having shared experiences in New Mexico, shared magic, shared feelings for each other. I accidentally slide into assuming you’ll share some of my beliefs. It’s weird, because I don’t tend to assume that about other people.”

“You say this like it’s a bad thing, but it doesn’t seem bad or unreasonable to me.”

“No, it feels very right most of the time, like I feel you accept a lot about who I am. I don’t want to start assuming that I know what’s right for you.”

Lily was stuck. Xavier felt good about her, felt like she accepted him, and Lily realized she felt good about and accepted by him. She knew she should control her feelings, but they were rising up and threatening to take control of her. She wanted to be held or maybe kissed or maybe something like she’d felt in her dreams from Xavier. And the more she noticed herself wanting it, the more she wanted it.

“Say something mean,” she said.

Xavier stopped and turned to face her. “No, why?”

The way he’d turned brought them even closer together, mere inches between them. The connection felt stronger, like it could pull them right into each other. She didn’t dare look at his face, or she was sure she’d think her wants too clearly in a moment, and that might come out as magic.

“Aardvarks,” he said.

Lily looked around. There were no aardvarks or pictures of aardvarks. They were standing on the sidewalk near the redwood grove where she’d once eaten lunch with Audrey and the Summer Conservation Corps. Hadn’t she felt magic in the soil here? Was being here what had caused her trouble?

She started walking away, and Xavier came along, still holding her hand.

“Does it help if I say something silly? I mean, you didn’t tell me to say ‘aardvarks,’ right? I thought of that on my own.”

Lily took a deep breath, feeling confusion more than anything else and being glad to distance herself from the grove and her sudden desire. “Yes, you seem to have come up with that all on your own, and yes, it seemed to help.”

Xavier squeezed her hand, and she felt way too much for a moment, but she could handle it again.

“So, what sort of things do you find yourself thinking I ‘should’ do with my magic?” Lily asked.

“Whether or not you really want me to answer that, I don’t think I want to talk about it, at least not right now. But if you wanted to volunteer anything about what you do believe, I’d like to know.”

“I don’t have any pretty answers for that. I don’t go to church, but I try to be a good person. I figure that if there’s any real god or gods who care what people do, then it would be insincere to do stuff to impress them that I wouldn’t be doing anyway. What you said seems sensible to me, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought it through that way. Mostly, I try not to be involved in mean stuff like spreading rumors or making fun of people, but I think I forget to do a lot of good things, like giving complements and offering to help. Maybe those aren’t exactly beliefs.”

“Close enough, and I disagree about it not being a pretty answer.”

“Yours sounded so clear cut and well thought through.”

He shrugged. “I’ve thought about how to say it. You’ve clearly thought about god and being your own person and not being mean.”

“It just sounds sort of childish compared to yours.”

“I couldn’t answer the god part if you asked me.”

“Did I answer what you wanted to know?”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing more about how you think you ‘should’ use your magic.”

“I think ‘do no harm’ is about as far as I’ve gotten.”

“Really, you don’t think about more? What about guiding the scientist to the murrelet at the salt flats?”

“It didn’t seem like it could do much harm, but I probably wouldn’t have done it without thinking more. That’s why I thought she’d used magic to influence me there.”

“Because it violates some belief you know you have, something beyond ‘do no harm.’”

They were almost back to her house now. Lily was stumped and then realized, “I guess I believe in thinking things through first. Maybe even that I have to go inside to make decisions where magic might play a role.”

Xavier asked, “Do you know if your magic works when you’re in your garage?”

Lily frowned realizing that not only should she have made a map, but she should have at least tested the garage. Looking down, she shook her head.

“Well, you can find out by walking in while I stand outside, right?”

“Should work, but why?”

“We could run a quick experiment.”

They were right in front of her house. Instead of walking to the front door, they walked down the driveway to the boxy, one-car garage. Lily used her regular house key to unlock the side door to the building, and she walked inside. Her family didn’t use the garage for a car. Instead, it held a lawn mower, some tools, circus stuff, and several boxes they hadn’t unpacked yet. It was neat and not very crowded. A few steps in Lily could feel her connection to Xavier fuzz and disappear.

Xavier was standing outside the door, watching her.

“No magic,” Lily said.

“Had you thought of the garage at all before I mentioned it?”

Lily shook her head, suddenly realizing that Xavier must have wanted to do something in the garage. She suddenly hoped the something involved kissing, and she was glad she hadn’t thought of it until she was inside.

Xavier walked across to her and stopped a few inches away in the dark. “I thought it would be less weird to talk here than in your bedroom, but if you’d rather go inside, we can.”

Lily thought the dark garage was a pretty weird place to stand and talk. Then again, she could believe that her bedroom would seem more awkward, especially given the bed and the dreams and all. She guessed that was what Xavier meant. “Works for me.”

“Would you be willing to tell me what happened by the park when you wanted me to say something mean?”

“Probably about what you guessed. You said something nice. I wanted too much. I was worried I’d lose control.”

“By too much, you mean too much for outside, but you’re okay with what you feel as long as we’re inside?”

There was something characteristically Xavier about the question, but Lily wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by it. She also wondered if he meant to bring back her earlier feelings by asking about them here. It seemed kind of manipulative but also kind of fair, like they’d postponed something for a better time and place.

Then she realized she could ask what she hadn’t before. “How do you feel when I squeeze your hand?”

“Try it, and I’ll tell you.”

They’d let go of each other’s hands when Lily walked into the garage. The magical connection had ended as well. Now simply taking Xavier’s hand felt like something special all over again. She knew it was a small thing, but as she took Xavier’s large, warm hand and felt it wrap around hers, it was like waking up in the morning on a day she’d been looking forward to for a while.

She gave his hand a squeeze, and he said, “I feel wanted. I feel close to you, and it makes me want to get closer.”

Lily wanted to know if he felt like he was falling or went weak in the knees, but somehow what he’d said took her words away. The idea of wanting to be closer was what she’d felt by the park and what she’d felt echoes of when Xavier asked about it. Now she wanted it again, but not with the pull she’d felt from magic. She wanted it in a hesitant way, as if she couldn’t quite believe her luck and needed to approach slowly so she wouldn’t miss anything.

Xavier reached out with his free hand and wrapped it around her waist. She took a step forward until they were almost touching. She could feel his warm hand through her sweater, his warm breath on the side of her face. She wanted to turn and kiss him, but instead she slid her arm around his waist and pulled herself in closer. Her body pressed against his from her knee to her cheek, and it was like the moments when he squeezed her hand but stretched much longer. Her whole body felt like jelly as both Xavier’s arms tightened around her. He might be holding her up. She thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe but she could. As she realized her arms were wrapped as tightly around Xavier as his were around her, she thought she’d never be able to let go.

They were as close together as two people could get, and it felt right. Their bodies seemed to fit perfectly, as if bodies were made for this. Her skin was awash with sensations, warmth, pressure, tingling.

Then she felt Xavier’s warm breath on her ear, and something inside her turned in a way it had never turned before. Her heart beat fast, almost like she was frightened. For a moment, she almost felt frightened. Then she felt Xavier’s heart beating, from his chest to hers and right through her body, and she turned her head and kissed him.

Their lips touched and every feeling on her skin and inside seemed to explode all at once. But their lips pressed and almost parted, and she felt like she was floating. Then they pressed together again and she felt Xavier’s tongue, and it wasn’t like it was someone else’s tongue at all. Maybe the wetness carried an electric charge, because where his tongue touched, she felt sensations she hadn’t known the insides of her mouth could feel. It was so surprising she almost forgot everything she was feeling with the rest of her body. She pressed more into the kiss using her tongue as well, and that was new and bizarre. Then all at once it was like she was feeling everything from the kiss all over her skin, and deep inside her body. It was completely overwhelming and consuming.

Not until her mouth left Xavier’s did she become aware that they were standing in her garage and that she was capable of thinking in words rather than sensations. She decided words were overrated and brought her mouth back to Xavier’s.

Many kisses later Lily rested her head against Xavier’s shoulder. She didn’t know what to say. If that was what kissing felt like, she couldn’t imagine why people needed anything more. By now, she felt something like sunburn, like all the sensations had been too much and each little nerve ending was a little sore and over-sensitive or maybe a little bit numb. Xavier’s hand stroked across her back and it was both pleasant and nearly too much to bear. Yet she couldn’t imagine letting go or letting him stop touching her.

After a while she said, “Is it always like that?”

“Never. I was starting to worry there was magic involved after all.”

Lily shook her head, even as she checked to make sure she couldn’t feel any other kind of connection. But that was the one thing she didn’t feel. Instead, she felt Xavier’s hair brush against her face as she shook her head. When she realized she’d probably been shaking her head too long, she said, “I like the feel of your hair.”

Xavier took a deep breath that came out almost as a laugh. “I like the feel of your hair and pretty much everything else, but your parents are going to get worried pretty soon.”

“I don’t think they know we’re out here.”

“I meant worried about you not being home.”

Lily looked at her watch and saw it was almost eleven. She had promised to be back by eleven, at the time, that had seemed like forever.

“I don’t think I can let go of you,” Lily said.

She felt a shiver pass through Xavier’s body, and she realized that whatever had happened to her had happened to both of them, and she was glad they’d shared it. She still couldn’t convince her arms to let go.

Finally, Xavier squeezed her tight and then pulled his arms away.

Lily was able to let go when he did, and she didn’t grab him right back even though she wanted to. While she didn’t want to let the evening end, she couldn’t stand to let it end badly, either.

“Maybe I should say goodbye here and walk to the house alone.”

Xavier smiled a funny half smile at her and said, “No. We’ll be fine. I’ll keep my bike between us if you want, but I’d like to walk you to the door.”

At her nod, Xavier left the garage and unlocked his bike, which was parked right alongside.

Lily locked the door to the garage and then walked beside him up the driveway to the front door. He did keep his bike between them. Lily wasn’t sure if it was a joke or if he wasn’t sure of his own self-control either. But she managed not to want anything more. What had happened was still too amazing to risk.

They said goodbye at the door without a touch or a kiss, but it was as if she could feel Xavier even when he stood several feet away. Their magical connection was back, but that wasn’t all she was feeling.

Lily stood in the doorway and watched Xavier bike until he was out of sight, and then she made herself close the door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

15

The Nest

The next morning, bright and early, she saw the van with the Stanford carpool and parking stickers at the parking spot nearest the Faber Tract. Max was down one side of the levee taking measurements of water levels. He waved as Lily crossed behind the shiny new flood gate before locking her bike.

Audrey was already there, speaking quietly with Kelly and Rachel. Dr. Martin wasn’t present.

“And you took the pictures?” Rachel asked.

“Of the nest,” Audrey said.

“Were you worried about upsetting the murrelet on the nest?”

“She seemed comfortable with me looking in. And really, she barely startled at the flash.”

“Do you think you could place a camera in the nest area?”

Audrey smiled then looked to Lily. “Maybe Lily should do it.”

Lily wanted to, but she also wanted Audrey to feel included. “You can,” Lily said, “You found the nest.”

“But they might be more comfortable with you,” Audrey said.

“Or not. I think it will be fine.”

Lebowski shook her head and looked pointedly at Lily. “Don’t worry, there will be plenty to do.”

Lily strongly believed in that moment that Rachel must know about the magic, that she was expecting Lily to calm the birds no matter who placed the camera. But there was no time to find out.

“Having this nest in a pipe should make this easier than usual. The camera set up is back in the van.”

Rachel started walking even before she finished the sentence, and Kelly fell in step beside her. They started discussing something to do with equipment. Lily and Audrey followed behind.

At the van Rachel explained a lot about electronics, batteries and fisheye lenses as she took pieces out of plastic wrap. In the end, she held two chunks, one in each hand. “Someone needs to place this camera,” she waved the larger chunk, “a few inches in from the edge of the pipe, far enough to keep it dry if wind blows rain in from the side. This magnet goes outside it on the pipe to hold it in place. Got it?”

Both girls nodded.

“Who’s doing it?”

Lily took one step back, and Rachel handed the equipment to Audrey. Kelly looked at Lily with questioning eyebrows, but Lily simply smiled to show she was pleased with the plan.

“We’ll all go out where we can see,” Rachel said. “I’ll bring the receiver and laptop to make sure it all works, but I’m going to stay several yards away to avoid interference. I’ll give you a thumbs up or thumbs down once you place the camera.”

Audrey was smiling as they walked out. Lily wondered if she’d need ground contact to keep Willow calm. She didn’t want to do anything conspicuous, but she also didn’t want to risk anyone upsetting the bird or causing it to abandon the nest.

When they were at the edge of the main path closest to the nest, Rachel whispered, “Audrey, you’ll go alone from here. If I give you a thumbs up, come back quietly. If I give you a thumbs down, try readjusting the camera. If it still doesn’t work, I’ll send Lily with more instructions.”

Audrey nodded quietly made her way along the narrow path and up the rise to the pipe.

Lily focused her connection to the bird on the nest as clearly into mind as she could. She felt the wavering signal as the bird noticed Audrey’s approach. Lily tried to steady the connection and calm the bird without closing her eyes.

Beside her, Rachel and Kelly were crouching low and setting the receiver and laptop on the ground. Rachel checked one switch and then turned on another. The screen lit up and Lily saw a jumble of reeds, presumably what Audrey was passing as she walked.

Lily crouched down beside Rachel as if she was moving to see the screen better. She surreptitiously dug her fingers into the muddy path beneath their feet. Her connection suddenly seemed easy and strong, although it still had some fuzz from the nervousness of the bird. Lily took a deep breath, calmed herself, and calmed Willow. She could feel a connection to Rachel as well, but it stayed separate and wasn’t a problem.

Lily watched the laptop without much thought and was surprised by a sudden dip and darkening. Then she saw the outline of a bird. Rachel reached forward to flip a switch and the bird became a yellow and red presence in the dark.

Rachel gave Audrey the thumbs up.

Lily tugged on her connection to the bird a little, to see if it would stand up and show the egg in what she thought must be infrared. The bird stood a little, and the egg shown faintly on the screen. Lily closed her eyes to see if she could catch a separate glow from the egg in her magical vision. She saw her bird clearly, right through the pipe, and the bird’s glow seemed to elongate toward the egg, but it was not a separate source as on the camera.

Lily opened her eyes and tried to remove her fingers from the earth. There was a sudden grab as if something, maybe nature, maybe Rachel, didn’t want her to let go. For a moment, Lily panicked, and then she threw herself into blocking the magic with a force she’d never mustered against dreams. Her fingers came free.

In that instant, she felt her connections to the murrelets and to Rachel shift. All connections went fuzzy, and Lily realized she’d startled the birds with her abruptness. On the screen, she saw Willow leave the nest and walk to the end of the pipe.

Lily’s heart raced as she thought her screw up might cause Willow to abandon the egg. She brushed her fingers lightly across the ground and calmed herself and Willow. It took only a couple seconds, but in that time, she saw the bird fidgeting on the video screen before finally going back to the nest. Willow turned around and repositioned herself a couple of times before finally settling down on her egg.

Meanwhile, Wispy came flying in fast. Lily felt his pull shifting directions, and she looked up to see his tilting descent. She tried to calm him, even as she noticed Rachel looking up to follow her gaze.

Audrey reached the path where she could see their group at the monitor. She also looked up, as did Kelly.

The others stood, but Lily stayed on the ground, projecting calm with her fingers barely above the soil as the murrelet landed near his pipe and out of the humans’ line of sight. Then he appeared on camera, entering the nest area.

Lily could feel his connection to her steady as he reached his mate.

Kelly pointed down the path, indicating that they should leave. Rachel picked up the small receiver, wiped dirt from the bottom onto her sleeve, then followed behind Kelly who carried the laptop. Lily stood and wiped her dirty fingers on her jeans, then followed Audrey who was smiling like she’d aced a test. Lily felt like she might throw up, but she tried to think it calmly, so she wouldn’t upset her birds.

When they reached the levee Max joined them, and they all admired their monitor view of the two murrelets and their nest. The birds didn’t move much or do anything interesting, but it was enough to entertain the human observers for at least ten minutes. Lily’s insides writhed as she tried to get over what had happened and not want anything. She only felt a weak connection to Rachel now, but she was uncomfortably aware of it. She kept her hands far away from the ground. Rachel gave no sign of noticing anything, and Lily wondered if the woman knew about magic after all.

“Dr. Martin’s missing out.” Audrey said.

“He’s happier in his lab,” Kelly said, “But once we boost this video through to Stanford, I’m sure he’ll be please we have nest TV.”

“I’ve got a wireless transmitter set up for the channel already,” Max said. “I’ll email you all a link once I’m back on campus and patch through the receiver. Password will be murrelet.”

“It’s like magic,” Lily said, only watching for Rachel’s reaction.

Rachel’s mouth took on a bit of a sneer

A few minutes later, when Rachel was packing up parts and the others were out of earshot, Lily went to her. “The last time you were here, you mentioned ‘bird whisperers.’ I was wondering what you thought was really behind something like that.”

“Patience, a feeling for the organism, maybe a scent or lack thereof.”

“Do you think it’s something we’re born with or something we learn?”

“Maybe a bit of both.” Rachel looked at her then, and it wasn’t a look that spoke of deeper understanding.

Lily had one more question to try. “Do you think it’s something I could improve at a summer job?”

“Whatever you have with birds, is probably as good as it gets. A job in the field might teach you proper techniques. You don’t want to rely on luck too much.”

Lily nodded. Either Rachel didn’t know about magic or she wasn’t going to admit to it.

“Are you considering a job?”

“I don’t know.”

Rachel turned back to her packing, and Lily didn’t think she’d impressed her.

 

The next day was rainy. Lily biked to school in her raincoat thinking it wouldn’t be too bad, but her jeans and shoes were unpleasantly soggy and cold through her morning classes. She met up with Audrey as usual for lunch, and over the pounding sound of rain, Audrey questioned her.

“What happened with you and Rachel Lebowski anyway?”

“I don’t know. She just did what she needed to.”

“No way, she thinks you’re great. She’d totally recommend you for any program you wanted.”

“That was only because of the murrelets. I think I disappointed her in person.”

“You’re taking things for granted. Don’t you know, you’re supposed to cultivate connections like that?”

Tilting her head to one side as if she could read an answer in the rain, Lily thought it was like Morse code in motion. “But how?”

“Send her email asking her opinion on some tricky question and then thank her when she answers.”

“What about Kelly?”

“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of chances with her too. But can’t you tell there’s something special between you and Rachel?”

Lily couldn’t, unless it was the magic, which she didn’t want to think about right now. She thought about Audrey instead. “You’re good at all this stuff.”

“I get by, but you’ve got some kind of magic working for you.”

Lily took a bite of soup from her thermos and asked about a tricky bit on the chemistry homework.

 

That night, Lily went back and forth in email and then instant messaging with Xavier. Somehow, email didn’t bother her, because it usually wasn’t immediate. But one of the reasons she disliked phone calls was that she never felt emotionally sure if she was understanding without seeing. Typing at Xavier she felt doubly cut off because she couldn’t see or touch him, and on top of that, they were trying not to talk about magic or Xavier’s dreams too directly.

L:         Can’t we try again tonight?

X:        Let me try other stuff first.

L:         I think I can do it now. I need to know.

X:        It might be easier next week.

L:         That’s a worse test then, isn’t it?

X:        Small steps?

L:         I miss you.

X:        Exactly. Me too.

L:         When can you visit again?

X:        Saturday? All day if you want.

They went on and on, and Lily knew it was eating into her homework time, and she knew it wasn’t the sort of conversation she wanted to be having with Xavier. She finally signed off feeling discouraged. That night she dreamed her own dreams, and they were all lonely.

 

Wednesday the rain still pounded against the windows. Audrey and Lily were cooped up in the snack room near Kelly’s office. Kelly had gone to meet with someone, but she’d left Lily nest cam recordings and habitat survey results to summarize. She’d also left a larger and more complicated sample kit.

Audrey was sitting across the table doing something with the levee simulation site Max had made.

“How high is the nest?” Audrey asked.

“Huh?” Lily looked up from her pile of papers, confused.

“How high above sea level? You should be able to get it from the survey data, or maybe the GPS on the camera.

Lily found the GPS numbers and Audrey plugged them in to her levee simulations. Then Audrey crinkled her nose and pulled her lips tight. “If we get a flood at high tide, which would be when we’d get one, that would be barely a couple inches above water level. But that’s assuming the surface of the water is exactly flat. There’s bound to be surges and wind.”

“And the camera is looking down at the nest,” Lily said, “Meaning it’s higher.”

Audrey grimaced, “When’s that chick due?”

“We don’t really know,” Lily said.

“Well, let’s hope it’s before this creek monitor gets to 16. That’s when the Faber Tract becomes overflow.”

 

 

 

 

 

16

Control

On Thursday night, Lily dreamed that Xavier was standing across a bare white room from her. His mouth was moving as if he spoke, but there weren’t any words. Lily sensed that he wanted her to go away. He held out his hands and made flicking motions, the way someone might shoe a fly, but with both hands. It was half funny and half hurtful. Then she realized he was telling her to block the dream, to try to leave it. She tried to imagine a door or falling out through a hole in the floor, but that didn’t work at all. She knew somehow that it was Xavier’s dream, and she couldn’t change anything in it. She needed to wish herself away. Xavier was trying to help her, and he wanted her to force her way out.

As soon as she understood emotionally, she wished herself “OUT” almost the way she’d thought “STOP” when trying to control others, and with some of the determination she’d found during the nest cam incident. It worked, and she was awake. It was 2:11, and Lily wondered for a moment if the experiment had worked or if the dream had merely ended. She knew she could text Xavier right away, but then it would be hard to get back to sleep, and he probably wouldn’t answer until the next day. She went back to sleep and dreamed about being late for her math test.

 

Friday evening Lily hurried home from Stanford. She kicked off her wet shoes by the front door then hurried past the kitchen to get to the computer. That morning, she’d written to Xavier in the usual roundabout way about how she thought she’d blocked part of his dream and that she wanted to try to block one completely tonight.

He’d written back:

Great. I’ll try the same thing tonight. I’ll come by tomorrow morning to hear your side of the experiment and to spend as much of the day as you want.

Btw, miss you too, X

Lily felt a rush of warm relief from getting the answer she’d expected. Then the warmth turned to face burning heat as Rose shrieked behind her. “Lily’s sneaking out with Xavier!”

Dad thumped in from the kitchen to say at the same time as Lily, “What?”

Then mom hurried out from the bathroom saying, “Did someone shout?”

Rose said, “Lily has email from Xavier saying they’re up to something tonight.”

“That’s not what it says,” Lily heard herself whine with embarrassment even though she hadn’t done anything wrong. “Why are you reading my email anyway?”

“I was walking by. Besides, you practically ran in here to get it.”

“Well, since you’re all here, would everyone like to read my email?” Lily hoped that would make them all back off. Instead, Rose read the email aloud with her own emphasis added.

“Great. I’ll try the _same thing_ tonight. I’ll _come by tomorrow morning_ to hear your side of the _experiment_ and to spend _as much of the day_ as you want.”

“It is rather vague,” their mom said, slipping off the high heels she’d worn to work.

Lily looked to her dad, expecting support, but he only raised his eyebrows.

“You know why it’s vague,” Lily said. Still no one spoke. She felt like she was center stage, in the spotlight, without a routine to perform.

Finally her dad suggested, “Why don’t we talk over dinner. It’s all but ready, especially if someone sets the table.”

Rose stomped off to her room.

Lily logged out of email and washed her hands in the kitchen. Then she set the table and sat down to accept her fate.

Once everyone was seated, her dad said, “What would you like to tell us, Lily?”

Rather than sulk and say “nothing,” Lily sat up straight and said, “I think people’s email should be private. I think anything Xavier has to say to me about magic should be even more private, and that’s why the email is a little cryptic.”

“Fair enough,” her mom said. “But if something is happening tonight, magic or otherwise, I think at least your dad and I should know about it.”

“I hate always being left out!” Rose said. “Do you know what would happen if I told people my sister could control my dad’s mind?”

“They’d probably send you to the counselor, dear,” Dad said it with a smile, but Rose hit her fork into her mashed potatoes hard enough to splatter some past her plate.

“If I’m supposed to keep this stuff secret, then I should know as much as anyone.”

“I don’t see how that follows,” Lily said.

Rose looked like she was about to hyperventilate, but Mom cut through it with her dead serious parental tone. “It sounds like you know as much as we do right now. Lily, what is Xavier referring to about tonight?”

Lily swallowed although she hadn’t eaten anything yet. “His magic is the ability to send dreams. The experiment is that he sends a perfectly boring dream of nothing happening in a plain white room, and I try to block it.”

The table was silent. Lily served herself chicken, potatoes, and asparagus mostly to avoid looking at anyone.

Then with little sister style, Rose said the worst thing she could think of, “I bet that’s not all he sends her dreams about.”

Lily felt her face heat again, knowing that was too close to the truth she wasn’t telling, but forcing herself to take a bit of asparagus and chew.

Her dad said, “It would have been better if you had told us.”

“It’s his private business. And he’s been really good about it. Much like I didn’t want to be outside at first, he wanted to learn to block the dreams himself first. Now he’s helping me learn to block them from my side.”

“How long has this been going on?” her mom asked.

“A couple weeks, or really, a few months, but we didn’t know what was happening at first.”

“What if you’d both gotten stuck in a dream somehow? We wouldn’t have known what to think or how to help,” her dad said.

“And what would you do now?” Lily asked. “Anyway, it’s not like that. They’re only dreams. Maybe you need to trust me.”

 _“Maybe you need to trust me,”_ Rose mocked. Then in the most steady, practical voice she’d used all night, she said, “It seems to me they trust you quite a lot. You’re out with Xavier or he’s here all the time. On top of that you have magic, which you totally take for granted, and everyone assumes that if you don’t see someone as magic, then of course they’re not. End of story.” Rose finished by wiping her mouth and saying, “I’ve had enough.” Then she left the table and headed toward her room.

After dinner Lily knocked at Rose’s door and called out, “I brought you some ice cream.”

Rose opened the door enough to accept the bowl but said, “Don’t think you're forgiven, and don’t forget that I can tell anytime I want to.”

 

Lily went to sleep that night more than a little unsettled but determined to block any outside dream that came her way. She woke with a start to the sound of thunder. It was almost five in the morning. She practically jumped out of bed, pleased with her success. Then she realized it was Saturday, and whatever Xavier had meant by morning, she could have slept in a bit.

But the storm was loud, and Lily was excited and not the least bit sleepy anymore. She pulled on her thick white robe and fuzzy boot slippers and made her way to peek through the curtains on her window.

The night outside was unusually dark with clouds and rain, but Lily could still see the outline of her trapeze rig. At the bottom the poles and guy lines seemed to anchor into a lake. Instead of grass, her backyard was one big puddle.

She crept downstairs for internet access and brought up the creek monitor site Max had been working with. The creek levels had been climbing all night. The reading near the Faber Tract was at 15 feet. Lily checked the nest cam. Both murrelets were asleep in their nest, even though the rain hitting their pipe sounded deafening over the camera mic. The next high tide wasn’t until 6:37 and the creek was still rising.

Lily wanted to be with her birds. The pack with her camera, sample collecting kits, water bottle, and snacks hung ready by the door, right by her big wading boots. For the first time in her life she seriously wished for a smart phone that could access the internet. She wanted to check the nest cam and creek monitor from the field. Instead she grabbed her mostly useless phone, put on the warmest, most rainproof clothing she owned, and left her parents a note.

Biking in the downpour with three layers of clothes and waterproof snow pants and boots, Lily couldn’t help but think up stupid Eskimo jokes. Her dad would sometimes tease that a woman needed a man like a fish needed a bicycle. She’d never thought it was one of his better sayings. But somehow it was funny when she thought that an Eskimo needed a bicycle like a fish needed a man. Even as she chuckled back in her throat, she knew it wouldn’t seem funny to a sane person inside a warm house at this hour. Of course, a sane person inside a warm house would probably be asleep. She kept peddling.

The creek was pounding under the bridge that she had to cross to get to the Faber Tract levee. It was a little pedestrian and bike bridge, but now the water splashed almost to the bottom and way out to the side. Where her bike light shown, the water looked like frothing chocolate, as it churned up the mud. There were branches and garbage crashing through with each surge, and some had snagged to form a dam on the left hand, upstream side of the bridge.

While Lily locked her bike in the usual place, she realized flood waters could come up to the pump station fence. At least the lock should keep her bike from floating away. Like the Eskimo on a bike image, this struck Lily as funny.

Instead of heading out to her usual unprotected spot, which would have been a pit of sucking mud now anyway, Lily surveyed the scene anew. She could already sense her murrelets, still sleeping. The salt marsh harvest mouse and other wakeful little creatures were up on a rise, a sort of natural levee, at the far side of the Faber Tract. Lily had never gone there, but it had some bushes and cover. It would be a fine spot for animals to escape to if the area flooded, and she might shelter under a bush without disturbing any of the creatures too much. Walking around the long way, Lily kept to high ground.

When she reached her chosen viewpoint, the cover wasn’t quite as good as it had seemed from a distance, but Lily settled down beside a bush. There was some shelter from the wind on two sides, and she stashed her backpack under a dense branch. As she’d expected, the little animals rearranged themselves to leave a small space around her. She removed a mitten and touched her hand to wet soil, then soothed the connections that had grown fuzzy and nervous with her approach. Rinsing her fingers, she resolved to make do with her non-touch perceptions and keep her mittens on.

The rain came down hard, like sitting under a shower. Inside her bulky snow and rain clothes, Lily was warm and fairly dry. Despite the howling wind and occasional thunder, it felt good to be in this web of watchful connected life, and to sense her murrelets sleeping nearby.

She didn’t know what she would do if water started to pour through the floodgate. She could encourage her birds to fly away, but they didn’t need her for that. Could she walk across and save their egg? Once the flooding started, she wouldn’t be able to see the paths. If the water was deep enough, she might be able to swim. Would the flow be fast enough to wash her into the bay? What if a branch hit her or tangled her legs? What if she got too cold or the egg got too cold or the murrelets wouldn’t come back to the egg?

Lily sat with the animals on the rise and wondered if she should go and rescue the nest now, while she still could. It was inside a chunk of pipe. If she could move the whole pipe, she was fairly sure she could keep the birds calm inside, and then they’d be able to stay with their egg and their nest. If only she’d brought a wagon, or a raft. With a raft she could walk out and prepare now, then put the pipe and all it contained onto the raft only if floodwaters came over the gate. She could pull the raft whether walking or swimming.

Nowhere on her little rise could Lily spot an abandoned raft or any floaty bits of Styrofoam. Such things would have been blown or washed into the bay long since. If the creek didn’t flood this time, Lily vowed that she would prepare a rescue raft in case this happened again. But watching the surging creek, she worried this might be it. The water looked higher than when she came. It was hard to tell with all the debris churning on top of the creek and the rain pouring down. She thought the sun was trying to rise in the east, but that was like trying to rise underwater.

Then on the bridge over the creek, Lily saw someone riding a bike. She didn’t have to close her eyes and look for a glow to know he was magic. She didn’t have to use magic at all. Somehow in the dark and storm, she knew by his outline and the way he moved, that it was Xavier. Then the strong tug of magical connection kicked into place like a physical jump start.

She got off her butt and hurried back along the high ground to where he was leaving his bike next to hers. He didn’t bother to lock it or to take off his backpack as he rushed out to meet her.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted through the rain.

“Me? What about you?”

“I was worried about you and couldn’t sleep. I came early, and somehow I thought you might be here with your birds. I cut off onto the bike trail without even checking your house. Don’t you know this is about to flood? There are police and firefighters out warning people and placing sandbags. It was on the news.”

“Are they sure it’s going to flood?”

He looked at her and shook his head. The strange laughter that had accompanied her all morning welled up in an audible laugh.

She said over the rain, “If the creek gets to 16 feet by that levee, the floodgate will open and flood the Faber Tract. The murrelets’ nest is in danger.”

They both looked where she pointed. Occasional splashes of water were making it over the gate already.

Xavier looked back at Lily, his head shaking again. “What can we do about it? Lily, you could die out here.”

She knew he was right. People died in floods, but she wasn’t scared now that he was with her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t been scared before. “I think we could move the whole pipe with their nest inside.”

To his credit, Xavier stopped shaking his head and looked at her seriously. “Move it where?”

“Onto that rise?”

“That’s a long way to carry a large pipe.”

“It’s made of plastic, not metal.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Kind of.”

“Is there any way I can get you to go home instead?”

Lily shook her head.

Xavier shrugged. “Fine then, tell me what to do.”

It was only then that Lily remembered they were outside and that she could be using magic to force Xavier to do what she wanted. She didn’t think she’d thought anything that way. She didn’t feel sure enough of anything to have forced her way, but what if she was wrong. “I can’t let you do this. You shouldn’t be out here with me.”

“I knew you’d forgotten!” Of all things, Xavier was smiling now. “You would have sent me home in a minute if you’d been worried about magic when I arrived. But I’ve been practicing blocking it, and there’s no way I’m leaving you here. Remember your belief in thinking before you make decisions, especially thinking inside? Either come back to your parent’s house with me, or tell me how we’re doing this, because I don’t think either of us could move that pipe alone.” He pointed to the still closed floodgate where the flood water was starting to spill over in surges. “Quickly, please?”

“Come on.” Lily led him along the higher ground as close to the nest as they could get. Then she led down onto footpaths that now looked like water channels, next to natural water channels that were now overflowing and merging like rivers. The ground was a mess of slippery mud. It wasn’t too bad for Lily in her boots, but she looked back and saw Xavier wearing regular sneakers. She felt guilty, even if she didn’t think she’d used magical influence, she couldn’t believe she’d dragged someone else into this. Yet she felt energized like the Duracell bunny to have Xavier with her. That feeling bordered on how she used magic. She shut it down and focused on the birds. They weren’t sleeping anymore. They were awake and nervous. She used what connection and concentration she had to try and keep them calm.

Soothing the murrelets all the while, she led Xavier right up to the nest. It looked completely different here in the middle of a storm. The branches that provided such clever camouflage most days now looked like a treacherous tangle. Lily started pulling them away with her mitten covered hands. “We have to get it free and try to carry it without tipping.”

Xavier reached into a side pocket of his pack and pulled out a red pocket knife. It wasn’t huge, just a fancy camping knife with different bits to choose from. But he found a sharp blade fairly quickly and starting cutting the worst of the weeds away from the pipe.

Lily scrambled to pull away all the enshrouding vegetation she could, but more and more she had to focus on the birds. They didn’t like the noises the humans were making, and when the pipe tilted a bit, both bird rushed to the uphill end. Lily calmed them gradually, then looked around to see that they were standing on an island. The birds had chosen a fairly good location for their nest. The wetlands around them were now a shallow lake with reeds and grasses sticking up from dirty water. Lily wasn’t sure she could find a path back to the rise she’d been watching from before.

Xavier was still sawing away with his knife, but it looked like he’d be done in a moment. He didn’t look frightened, and Lily wondered if she’d calmed him when she’d meant only to calm the birds. The thought turned her stomach. She closed her eyes and focused on all the connections around her. The glows weren’t distinct when she didn’t touch the ground, but they were no longer surrounded by life. She hoped most of it had moved to higher ground or flown up into the air. Back on the rise where she’d sat with the harvest mouse, there were now three or four times as many nervous little lives. Her mouse didn’t seem too upset, and she wondered if that was from her magic, too.

Xavier finished cutting. “Should we try to lift it?”

Lily looked around again. What if the water didn’t get much higher? What if they moved the nest and it turned out to be unnecessary? How were they ever going to explain this to anyone?

But she could see the water crashing through the open floodgate, and she knew it was too late to wait and see. “Let’s try.”

They both lifted. The pipe only shifted half an inch, but Wispy rushed out on Xavier’s side. For a moment, she thought the murrelet would attack Xavier, but it beat its wings awkwardly and took off. Xavier had jumped back, releasing his end, and Lily realized she’d lowered hers, too. Xavier was using his knife to clear the grasses and muck right around the base of the pipe on his side. Lily wiped hers clear with her mitten, still thinking strong calm thoughts, focused as well as she could on Willow in the pipe. Xavier ran the knife along the base on her side of the pipe, then put it in his pocket and signaled to lift.

This time it worked. They had the pipe off the ground. Mama bird, nest, and egg were still safe inside.

The pipe was in good condition, but a lot heavier than Lily had expected. There must have been a fair amount of dirt and debris collected inside. Keeping it level between the two of them was like carrying a table set with dishes, and they weren’t merely shifting it across the room.

“I’m not sure we can carry this to the rise,” she shouted.

“Put one arm under. I think we can make it.”

Whether her magic had affected him or not, Xavier’s words made Lily feel stronger. She put one arm under her end of the pipe and kept a tight grip on the opening with her other hand. She was glad for the mittens even if they were mostly soaked through, and she hated to see Xavier’s bare hands on the other side. She felt the bird between them grow restless, and Lily tried to calm it, even as she planned to grab the nest if either she or Xavier started to fall. She knew the mother bird might fly. If Lily had to she could call her back to the nest. But Lily wasn’t sure that would work while they were moving, or that the bird would stay with the egg and nest after Lily’s magic ran out if she’d compelled it that way.

Lily nodded to Xavier and they stepped down into the flooded wetlands. In a few minutes, the cold water rose over the tops of Lily’s boots. They were full of water and sloshing around a bit. It was hard to lift her foot to take even one step, and she didn’t know how they could ever make it to the rise.

Then she felt the surge of magic like the tide coming in. It didn’t exactly make her strong, but it gave her energy and kept her warm. She moved forward, carrying her end of the pipe, and somehow Xavier kept pace beside her.

The mother bird settled right down as the connection between them warmed and swelled with increased magic. Lily could sense the egg as a separate tug of life, and she wondered if that meant the chick was ready to be born. Wading through swirling currents of filth, Lily calculated back 33 days, and figured that if the egg was ready to hatch, it would have been laid shortly after New Year’s.

She almost tripped on a tangle of weeds in the water, but Xavier kept the pipe still and level while Lily got her balance back.

She smiled at him.

He smiled back.

She was pretty sure she was in love.

They kept walking as the water rose above their knees. It was sweeping across in huge swells, not seeping up slowly. The top was stirred by the wind. Lily couldn’t feel any pull toward the bay, and she wondered if they’d reached high tide and equilibrium. She wanted to look back to where the pipe had started, but there was no way to do that while holding the pipe level to protect the nest. Lily shifted her arm underneath to move it a little closer to Xavier’s end, and that made balancing a lot easier. She wondered why she’d been more worried before and realized the bird had been very nervous then.

Now the bird was fine, only the slightest bit of nervous static tinged their connection. Xavier didn’t look good though. Where she could see his fingers on the end of the pipe, they looked white or even bluish. His hood had blown off, and the rain was pouring right down into his coat.

“I can hold it for a moment while you fix your hood,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” he answered.

“Please!” she said and stopped.

He stopped as well and used one hand to fix his hood while the other still braced the pipe.

She wondered if she’d used magic to make him do that, and she realized she might have, but maybe it was for the best. She wondered if she could send him a little bit of the warmth and energy she was taking in through her magic. She closed her eyes and tried.

He yelled, “Stop it!” over the rain, and Lily felt guilty. But she was also worried. He looked a lot worse that she felt, and they were only about halfway to the rise.

Now that Xavier was holding on with both hands again and they were stopped, Lily took the opportunity to look back to where the nest had been. She couldn’t see any solid ground above the water, but with all the grasses and debris it was hard to be sure. Luckily, the rise ahead was still clear. With all the magic flowing through her and all the small animals there connecting to her, Lily was pretty sure she could make it. She wasn’t sure about Xavier. It looked like he was shaking with cold now.

“I think I can help you, Xavier.” She tried to pitch her voice over the wind without sounding like she was shouting. “You may need to let me.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

In the minute they’d been stopped, it felt like her boots had been buried in mud. She didn’t know how Xavier managed to lift his feet without magic. Perhaps some was seeping through without him knowing. Then he stepped down suddenly into what once had been a channel. Lily managed to balance the pipe, and she realized that while she couldn’t see the ground, she seemed to be expecting safe footing in the right place with each step.

She remembered the day when she’d felt herself blend into the earth and almost lose track of her body. This was nothing like that. Now, her senses extended seamlessly beyond herself and were keeping track of her body relative to systems around her. She hoped she wouldn’t feel as drained at the end as she had some other times. It might be she’d found a way to fully connect her magic without losing herself or wearing out. For now, all she could do was keep moving.

When they were almost to the rise Wispy swooped down and landed in front of them. Lily strengthened her connection to him, but he was already surprisingly calm. It was almost as if he was choosing a site for the nest. Lily had no desire to fuss about it, as soon as she and Xavier reached the spot, they set the pipe down. The male bird didn’t rush inside; he stood at one end as if on guard. Lily pulled Xavier to the other end.

“Sit here for a minute. I need to get my backpack.”

Xavier sat, and by the time Lily returned he’d opened a large black umbrella that must have come from his own pack. She sat beside him under it. Then she unloaded the camera from her pack. “Can you snap some pictures of the flooding and a quick one or two of the nest? I think I’d better call Kelly. If the nest cam is still working, someone’s bound to notice sooner or later that we moved the pipe.”

Xavier took photos without saying a word. He didn’t look happy, and Lily was sure he was cold. She was freezing now that they were out of the water and her magic was back to minimal. But she called Kelly and was answered on the first ring.

“Lily!” She didn’t sound like she’d had to wake up.

“Yeah, sorry to bug you, but we had to move the nest. I was out here, and it was flooding. I couldn’t let the baby die.”

“We’ll talk about that later. I’m glad you’re alright. Max tried to get there with the van, but Embarcadero and a lot of other roads are closed.”

“Is the nest cam still working?”

“More or less. It was better when Max first called me half an hour ago. Luckily, he recognized your voice and figured out what was going on. Your parents called me. You should call and tell them you’re alright.”

“Can’t they tell from the nest cam?”

“All we’ve got is a glow showing one bird is still warm. The audio may have been wiped out or may be intermittent.”

Lily panicked for a moment wondering if she or Xavier had said anything earlier about magic that Max or someone might have overheard. But Kelly didn’t seem to be freaking out. Lily decided that worry could wait for later.

“The other bird is standing right outside the pipe. Do you want to tell me anything else before I call my parents?”

“I guess it would be a bit late to say, ‘Don’t do anything risky.’ No, call home. I’m glad you’re okay. The water should be receding now.”

Lily looked at her watch. It was after seven. They’d spent more than an hour rescuing the nest, and now high tide was past. She took a break between calls to tell Xavier, “The researchers had already figured it out. I’m not sure what they heard over the nest cam, but it evidently worked enough for Max to recognize my voice. Kelly was nice about it, says the water is receding, but I should call home.”

“Good idea,” Xavier said, and he went back to taking pictures.

Lily called home and got her mom.

“Hi, Mom!”

“We were worried. Are you okay? What are you doing out there?”

“Didn’t you see my note and the nest cam?”

“Uh, yes. Why was it jiggling? Was it floating? Kelly said someone heard you talk about lifting it, and that there’s a man out there with you?”

Lily laughed, “It’s just Xavier.”

“Just!” he said between clicking photos.

There was a pause on the parental end, “Lily, what is Xavier doing out here?”

Lily guessed from the tone of her mom’s voice and the way she said “here” and not “there” that she was on treacherous ground. Could her mom think that Xavier had come out for some secret rendezvous? Was she still suspicious about the email last night? “Mom, it’s kind of hard to explain. Xavier came out here looking for me. I’m not entirely sure how or why, but I’ll tell you anything you want to know when I get home.”

“Are you on your way now?”

“Uh, no? Mom, I need to stay with the birds.”

“What? There’s a flood alert and this storm. What’s going on out there?”

“Xavier helped me rescue the birds. We moved the pipe with their nest up onto a rise. But they’re sort of exposed here. We need to stay with them today.”

“All day? Do you have a tent or anything?”

“No. Mom, there’s no room for a tent here. Is dad around?”

“He’s out clearing street gutters with the neighbors. Before that they were laying sandbags. For a short while, the city thought our neighborhood might flood. The storm drains backed up and made the street impassible. Some of the worst hit cars might be ruined. But they think we’re okay for today.”

“I’m sorry mom. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay.” Her mom stopped talking. When Lily was about to speak, her mom said, “I kind of understand about you wanting to protect the egg, kiddo. Take care.”

Lily had tears in her eyes as she hung up. Her mom hadn’t called her ‘kiddo’ in a while. While she hated the term, it was kind of sweet having her mom compare her to the egg.

Lily checked for missed messages and saw she had five. Three from her parents, one from Max, and one from Kelly, all from while they were moving the birds. She unzipped her jacket and slipped the phone to an inside pocket where it could stay relatively dry and she’d feel if it vibrated. Then she took a good look at Xavier. He’d put the cover back on the camera and was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees. He was definitely shivering.

They were both soaked and muddy up to about the waist. The water hadn’t gotten that deep, but they’d stumbled or been splashed several times. However, Lily was wearing wool and microfleece that retained some warmth even when wet, and her top half was still fairly dry down by her skin.

Xavier looked to be wearing about what he always wore: sneakers, jeans, tee shirt, sweater. He’d had a waterproof jacket on top, but she’d seen the water streaming in while his hood was down.

“Xavier, do you have any spare clothes in your backpack?”

“No, but I’m okay.”

“You’re not okay. You’re shivering.”

“I’ll be fine.” He closed his eyes as he said it, and she knew he was trying not to snap at her.

“Xavier, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came when you did. I couldn’t have done this without you. But I can take care of the birds now. You could go to my house, get some dry clothes and food.”

He turned to look her full in the face. “You’ll make me if I say no, won’t you?”

Lily cringed. She didn’t know if it was right or wrong, but she knew she’d want to. She leaned forward wanting to whisper in his ear about the camera and that the audio probably wasn’t working, but that they should be careful what they said.

“It’s okay. I know. But you have to promise to let me come back.”

“If you still want to.”

“I’ll want to. It might be best if you lend me your bike key though.”

“What?”

Lily looked back to where their bikes had been. She only saw one, but it was a long way off, too far to be sure.

“Here,” he handed her the camera as he stood up. “You can zoom in.”

She tried to send the umbrella with Xavier as well as the bike key, but he shook it off as useless and trudged away across the muddy high ground. Lily used the camera to check things out, and saw where her bike stood chained to the fence. Xavier’s was gone, but she couldn’t figure out how. The waters had overflowed through the floodgate like they were supposed to. There was no sign they’d crested the levee or disturbed where the bikes were. Lily realized the storm might have been strong enough to start Xavier’s bike down the slope into the flood zone. She scanned with the camera and found what might be a wheel sticking out of the water.

She took a picture, then zoomed in on the creek and took a few more. The water did seem calmer now, although it was still raining hard. She tried to zoom in where she thought the nest had been, but she couldn’t see enough to be sure. Instead, she took pictures of the pipe in its new location. It did look awfully exposed. She took pictures of the male murrelet and the other birds watching the flood from this patch of higher ground. There were more birds gathered together here than she’d ever seen in one place. Closing her eyes, she identified the three California clapper rails she’d found before as well as a few egrets, wrens, and sandpipers, all taking refuge on this narrow, raised spit of land. A bird of prey soon circled overhead, but Lily couldn’t tell for sure if it was a hawk. She had no problem identifying its pattern in her magic as the only connection pulling in circles straight up, and she weakened that connection, encouraging that bird to fly away. She hadn’t even thought before interfering. It felt like what she was meant to contribute.

Xavier finally made it to Lily’s bike. It seemed to have taken him ages. She used the camera for a moment to zoom in and see he was more or less okay. She couldn’t tell if he was still shaking. Maybe moving around was enough to keep him warm, at least he’d made it all around the flooded tract.

After he biked out of sight, Lily took pictures of everything she could. The water had stopped coming through the floodgate. She documented the area in flood. She photographed the cord grass that reached through the water. When a flock of ducks flew in and a low blast of sunlight broke through the clouds she took dozens of photos in a minute. There wasn’t any rainbow, but it was beautiful.

There were also snags of garbage, plastic bags and Styrofoam that she photographed.

Her murrelets stayed in their pipe, Wispy having joined Willow at some point. No birds of prey dared to threaten their little rise for now, but Lily didn’t want to risk leaving the birds exposed. She sat huddled up in the rain and hoped that Xavier would come back soon, maybe bringing a thermos of hot chocolate. She remembered how she hadn’t wanted to be outside with him, hadn’t trusted herself. She wasn’t sure she could trust herself completely now, but something had changed. She and Xavier had rescued the nest and her magic had helped. She was pretty sure she hadn’t used it on Xavier, at least not in any selfish way. Maybe that was enough. If she might have used it to protect him from exposure or real harm, maybe that was a concession they could both live with.

When her hands grew too numb to work the camera, Lily put it away and tucked her bare hands inside her clothing.

She thought the water was down several inches from its peak by the time she first saw people walking out on the levee. They were a couple, man and woman, probably older by the way they moved. Lily saw that they had binoculars and cameras. They spent many minutes photographing the changed wetlands and birds that were taking refuge on the levee. Then they turned their lenses to the rise where Lily and the other creatures sheltered. Lily worried that she might be reported for trespassing again, or the couple might call someone to “rescue” her.

She slipped off her waterproof ski jacket, being careful to keep a good hold on both it and the umbrella. Then she positioned herself so the watchers could see her Stanford Research jacket. They waved, and she waved back slowly, not wanting to startle any birds. Then they wandered back in along the levee, and Lily gladly replaced her outer jacket.

There weren’t any other visitors for a while. Lily took two more rounds of pictures as the water receded and ate a granola bar from her backpack. She was thirsty, too, but she decided to wait until Xavier came back. She knew she couldn't leave to use the bathroom until then.

Xavier still hadn’t returned when Lily saw another familiar figure make his way past the bike bridge and out along the high ground. Even though the person’s gate looked familiar, it took Lily a moment to realize Max was coming out to where she sat. She rose with the umbrella and went to meet him on the far side of the raised area, where they wouldn’t disturb the birds as much. The rain had faded to a sprinkle, and Lily kept expecting more predators, but she hadn’t had to send any away since the first circling hawk.

“Hey, Lily. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, so the roads are open now?”

“More or less. And we’re going to have press in a few minutes. What got into your head?”

“I had to save the egg.”

He looked like he’d run into a sliding glass door. For someone wearing full raingear from hood to wader boots, he looked awfully unprepared.

“Well, when a reporter asks, make it clear you acted on your own, without approval.”

“Was it that bad?”

“It’s pretty bad. Come on back to the flood gate.”

“I can’t leave the nest unguarded. This trail is open to the public and all sorts of predators.”

“You can’t stay forever.”

“I was hoping others from the team might take turns.”

Max raised his eyebrows and shook his head, as if she was totally nuts.

“But then we’ll see when the egg hatches and if the parents take the chick to sea within a day or two like normal murrelets.”

“Video monitor. Tracking devices.” He pointed in the vague direction of the van. “Anyway, that could be weeks from now.”

“But what if a predator comes before the egg hatches?”

“That could have happened anyway. It’s not our job to stop it.”

“But the nest was endangered out there.” She pointed to the original nest site, now barely above the receding waters. “Human's caused that, because of the new floodgate. Don’t we owe the birds something?”

There was a long silence. A white van was making its way up the bike trail that also served as an emergency road on the far side of San Francisquito Creek. It had the letters “KRON4, The Bay Area’s News Station” written on it and something boxy on top that might be a TV transmitter.

“No, actually we don’t. Are you coming?”

Lily shook her head, and Max jogged back toward the creek and the van as well as he could in knee high boots.

Lily pulled out her phone and called home.

“Hello?”

“Hi Dad, is our street safe now?”

“It’s fine, how are you?”

“Max is mad at me for saving the egg, and he’s gone to speak with someone from KRON4 now.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not alone out there.”

“Did Xavier make it to our house?”

“Yes. He was chilled through. We got him into a warm shower and then some dry clothes. I don’t want to send him out again, but I also don’t want you alone. I’m packing some supplies and coming myself. Anything specific you need?”

“No, is Xavier okay?”

“He doesn’t seem to have hypothermia or frostbite, but I’m glad you sent him in. You did send him in, didn’t you?”

“Just with words.”

“We’ll talk more when I get there, and I’ll tell you ahead of time, I’m prepared to stay all day or transport that nest back if need be. “

Lily knew he was spelling it out now to prevent her from worrying about influencing him later. The extra effort made her feel warm and safe in that special dad way. “Thanks for understanding,” she said.

Then she watched through the zoom on her camera as the reporter interviewed Max. Water was no longer flowing through the floodgate, but she saw Max using his hands to explain the mechanism. They filmed Max, the floodgate, and out across the Faber Tract.

Then the three of them, reporter, cameraperson, and Max, all started along the levee toward her. All of them looked big and solid in their cold weather rain gear. Lily was fairly certain they were all male, although the cameraperson kept a jacket hood up, making it hard to tell.

Lily looked at her rise of land. The grass here grew like un-mowed lawn from some semi-neglected backyard. The only bird visible was the male murrelet, standing guard outside his pipe nest again. Lily knew there were several small birds hidden in the shrubbery on the far side of this levee, and she knew exactly where her salt marsh harvest mouse was sleeping. Some of the larger birds, like the great egrets, had made their way back down into the borders of the wetlands. There were still no predators flying above or approaching from town, and Lily wondered if that related to her magic at all.

Standing at the edge of her rise, where she’d spoken to Max, Lily waited. She kept her connections to the murrelets and others as calm as possible.

The reporter took the lead as the men grew closer. He waved to Lily from about twenty yards away, and she waved back. He looked like an REI ad with an almost new navy and yellow jacket and the sort of tousled hair and masculine beauty that seemed to say, “I like to hike, and you’d like hiking with me.”

When they were close enough to talk he said, “Hi. I’m Lloyd Mallone. Are you willing to be interviewed?”

Lily looked at Max, and he shrugged. Lloyd followed the exchange like an opening serve in tennis, then raised an eyebrow to Lily.

“Sure, why not?” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Let’s record from the start,” Lloyd smiled.

The cameraman, who was in fact also male, unpacked a large video camera with some sort of clear raincoat of its own and hoisted it to his shoulder.

Lloyd began, “We had a report from some birders this morning that a very young Stanford researcher was out in the middle of the wetlands right after the flood. Can you tell us what you were doing out here this morning?”

“First off, I’m only a high school sophomore. I’m doing a science research project working with the Wetlands Conservation Study Team from Stanford, but coming out this morning was my own idea.” She looked to Max again and he nodded.

Lloyd kept smiling, but Lily heard a sterner tone when he asked again, “What brought you out here this morning?”

“Well, that bird back there,” she paused and pointed to the male murrelet, barely visible through the grass from where they stood, “Is a male murrelet. We thought at first he was an ancient murrelet, which would have been weird enough living in the wetlands by San Francisco Bay, but it turns out, he might be some species or subspecies of murrelet we didn’t know about before. Then in that pipe is a nest with a female murrelet, probably a regular ancient murrelet, and an egg.”

Lloyd nodded for her to go on. She was pretty sure he already knew the story from Max and was simply waiting for her to tell it.

“Anyway, their nest used to be out there,” she pointed “On a little rise that stayed above the usual tide but went underwater when the floodgate opened. Since the nest was inside this big plastic pipe, a friend and I moved it to higher ground.”

“Was this after the flood gates opened?”

“Partly.”

“Wasn’t that dangerous?” The reported sounded overly dramatic to Lily.

“You know, the water didn’t rise all that fast. We were cold, and falling down could have been bad for us and the birds, but we did okay.”

“And otherwise these rare birds would have died?”

“Well no. I mean, the adult birds can fly, but they would have lost the egg.”

“Did the adult birds stay on the nest while you carried the pipe?”

“Yeah, one did. I found them, and I’ve been observing them for a long time. They’re pretty used to me.”

Lloyd shifted to face toward her a bit more, “Let me get this straight. You and a friend came out here in the middle of a storm, knowing this area was about to be flooded, and carried that pipe through rising water to save an egg?”

It sounded much more bizarre the way Lloyd said it. Lily nodded.

“Try to explain for me what exactly it was like out there in the middle of the flood.”

“When we started, it was mostly mud and there were lots of swollen channels of water. I had these waterproof boots, but my friend was only in sneakers. We made our way out to the pipe okay, but it was all hidden and tangled in cordgrass and pickleweed, so we had to cut it out a bit. The male bird flew up above, but the female stayed on her nest. Sometimes the water splashed up to our waists, especially crossing that last channel down there, but we could see where we were going. This is the high ground. So, we just kept moving toward it. When we set the pipe down, the male murrelet came to stay nearby.”

Lloyd smiled, “Now what?”

“Well, this spot may be dry, but it’s not as hidden from predatory birds as before. Also, this levee runs right back to town, so people, dogs, raccoons, or all sorts of trouble could come that way. I guess I’m just going to have to guard the nest until we can put it back or until the chick is ready to leave the nest.”

“How long is that?”

“If the chick doesn’t hatch by the end of this storm, I guess we’ll put the nest back. But it may hatch soon, and ancient murrelets take their young out to sea within a couple days of hatching.”

“Are you planning to stay overnight?”

“My dad said he’d help, and maybe we can get some other people to take shifts?”

“Isn’t the park closed after hours?”

“I guess so, to the public. I have a research pass, because I come before dawn a lot. Hopefully we can work something out.”

Lloyd motioned for the camera to switch off. “We probably shouldn’t use that last part. No one should know if you’re out here alone at off hours.” He turned to the cameraman, “Can you get more footage of the bird and the pipe?”

The cameraperson nodded, but Max said, “You’ll have to shoot from here. We shouldn’t go any closer.”

Lloyd turned back to Lily, “There isn’t any way we could get pictures of the nest, is there?”

Lily glanced at Max, but he was still busy with the cameraperson. “We had an infrared camera watching the nest. I don’t know how well it’s working, but Max could show you back at the van. We have some still photos, too.” She pulled out her phone to show Lloyd a couple. “We have some from a better camera that Max can probably give you.”

 

When Lily’s dad showed up at the rise where Lily waited, he said, “A reporter in the parking lot asked me to sign a photo release for you. I assume that’s what you wanted.”

“I guess so. I don’t know what’s good or bad at this point.”

Her dad gave her a one-armed hug. “Food would be good. I brought hot chocolate and sandwiches. Where shall we sit?”

They sat and ate and talked under an umbrella near the place where she’d been interviewed. Lily told her story all over again, and her dad asked a lot more questions than Lloyd had.

“Can you tell if the egg is about to hatch?” her dad asked.

Lily glanced over to where the pipe was, over four yards away with a microphone on its camera that might not even be working. Still, she whispered, “I don’t know. But it glows separately from the mother when she stands up, and I feel a separate connection. I think something must be distinctly alive inside right now. Most murrelets eggs hatch after about a month. It’s been long enough since I saw both parents away from the nest at the same time.”

They’d both finished eating by then and her dad packed away the remaining food. The air was extremely humid. It felt like rain, but none seemed to be falling anymore. A slimy, salty smell clung to the damp air.

Her dad said, “Why don’t you go home and rest for a bit.” I’m not going to want you out here alone at night, but I might let you and Xavier take another shift this afternoon.”

“Is Xavier just sitting around our house?”

“Probably eating or resting while his clothes finish drying. He wasn’t dressed well for your adventure this morning.”

“I know. I didn’t ask him to come.”

“Which raises a whole other set of questions.” Her dad gave what for him was a stern look, but his eyes were soft with laugh lines in evidence. “For now, why don’t you call your mom for a ride home. I’ll do my best to keep predators away from the birds.”

Lily paused to make sure her murrelets and egg were all okay. She tried to show them a connection to her father and that they should be calm with him too, but she had no idea if it came across. Still, anyone should be able to chase off raccoons or wave away predatory birds, and she didn’t think the murrelets would abandon their egg due to that sort of human interference.

Lily headed home. She didn’t call her mom, since it was almost as fast to walk. The first few blocks looked fine, but once she crossed the freeway there was mud reaching several feet out from the gutters. Part of the street by her home showed a layer of mud all the way across and up onto the sidewalk. The houses had been built a couple of feet above street level, preventing any indoor space from been affected. Still, it was disconcerting. Would some houses here have flooded without the floodgate?

Lily hadn’t worried about her own house flooding. She’d rushed off to save the egg, and somehow Xavier had shown up in time to save her.

When she walked in her front door, she was full of questions for Xavier, but first she had to get through a round of questions from her mom. They sat in the living room where Xavier had been napping under a blanket on the sofa. He was dressed in her dad’s jogging clothes, probably the only thing her dad owned with a drawstring waist. At some point, she heard Rose’s door close loudly and the volume of her music increase behind it. Xavier said barely a word as Lily’s mom interrogated her about the morning, the TV reporter, and how long her dad was staying out there.

“He said Xavier and I could take another shift watching this afternoon,” Lily said.

“Is he planning to go back at night?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What if it storms and floods again?”

“Is it supposed to?”

“Who knows?”

Her mom went over to check the computer. Lily asked, “Would it be okay if Xavier and I went to talk in my room?”

“Can’t you talk in here?”

Lily felt herself begin to blush. “Mom, I swear we’ll only be talking. You can walk in any time you want, okay?”

“Oh, fine. I’ll bring you some hot chocolate once I’ve looked this up.”

“I just had hot chocolate with dad.”

“Would you rather have tea?”

Lily rolled her eyes and looked to Xavier. He said, “Honestly, I wouldn’t mind hot chocolate. I’m not cold anymore, but your family has good chocolate.”

Lily’s mom smiled.

“Sure, hot chocolate would be fine for both of us,” Lily conceded.

“Thanks,” said Xavier as they headed down the hall to Lily’s room.

 

As soon as Lily closed her door, Xavier caught her in a quick kiss.

“My mom,” Lily whispered.

“No one can make chocolate that fast.”

They kissed again until Lily lost track of time, of where her body was, and of whatever she'd meant to talk to Xavier about. When they let go, he practically set her on the bed, because her legs seemed to have melted beneath her.

Then he very politely walked across to her desk and sat himself down on the straight backed wooden chair.

She looked at him without words, and he smiled back.

“Was there something you wanted to talk about?” he asked.

Lily tried to pull herself together, but everything seemed even more surreal now. As if she’d crossed the line into a fairy tale she asked, “How do you keep showing up exactly when I need help?”

He tilted his head, “Other than today?”

“Back in New Mexico, it happened twice, once when I was getting bullied near Jen’s locker and once in the cafeteria. Then you called me to help rescue Jen when she was trying to collect that petrified wood, allowing us to show up when she needed us.”

“I was watching Jen, you know that. All those things happened because I was keeping an eye on her.”

“But if you’d stayed watching her, you wouldn’t have seen either of the things that happened to me after she’d left.”

“Okay, I guess I saw you might be in trouble and shifted my focus.”

His answer made sense, especially now that she knew he’d been interested in her even back then, something she’d been sadly oblivious to at the time. Still, it seemed like there was something more like magic involved.

“I also had a weird dream, where Jen was scratching her way through the wall into my bedroom. She finally pulled through, like she was swimming through air, but left the wall intact. That was the day I went with my dad to Chaco.”

Now Xavier looked concerned, “I remember having a very vivid dream like that.”

They tried to figure out dates but couldn’t quite be sure. Nonetheless, Xavier was looking a bit pale with worried lines around his eyes.

“No,” Lily said. “When I woke up, it was light outside. It must have been way past two AM.”

Xavier shook his head. “My strongest dreams used to come later. It changed when I moved here.”

“Time zone?”

“It shifted more than that. And it didn’t change when I went home for winter break.”

There was a light tap at the door, and Lily’s mom came through without waiting for a reply. She smiled at first, probably to see that they were sitting across the room from each other. Then she looked more closely at Xavier. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Xavier straightened up, “I’m fine, Mrs. Thompson.”

“Leanne,” She put her hand to his forehead and sighed. “Drink your hot chocolate. I’ll go check if your clothes are dry.”

When the door shut, Lily whispered, “She’ll keep finding excuses to check on us.”

Xavier nodded in the way of someone who’s not really listening.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Lily said.

“I know,” Xavier tried to smile, but didn’t quite make it. He took a sip of his chocolate instead. “I’d already known I passed dreams to my dad before that, but I didn’t know I could pass them to you then or that I could project a dream that didn’t have me in it.”

“Well, it’s another thing for you to test, right?”

He nodded.

“And if you sent a dream last night, I blocked it, and the one the night before I seem to have gotten out of. That’s all good, right?”

“Yeah,” he smiled more sincerely this time. “And we rescued the birds together and were okay outside, right?”

He said “right?” the same way she had, and it made her laugh. She wanted to kiss him again, but figured her mom might be back at any moment.

“You don’t think there was anything magic about you showing up early this morning?”

“Maybe I know you too well. I’d heard there was a flood advisory the night before, and I’d been eager to get out here anyway. I figured that if I didn’t find you out watching your birds, you’d at least be awake checking the creek monitor.”

Safely inside, Lily had the very disquieting sense that there had been some kind of magic involved, but maybe this wasn’t the time to press the point. “That’s still kind of amazing.”

“If I were truly amazing, I would have anticipated going for a swim and dressed accordingly.”

Soon after, Lily’s mom returned with Xavier’s dry clothes and extra layers that he could wear when they went back out to the wetlands. He was changing in the bathroom when her mom called out, “Lily, come see the TV.”

Lily caught the last bit of Max explaining the new floodgate, then there was a clip of her saying, “When we started, it was mostly mud and there were lots of swollen channels of water...” It continued through the question about how long the nest would need protecting, where she said, “If a chick doesn’t hatch by the end of this storm, I guess we’ll put the nest back. But it should hatch soon, and ancient murrelets take their young out to sea within a couple days of hatching.”

There was no further explanation about the murrelets or why this nest was special. Instead, they cut to a city official explaining how well he thought the new flood management plan had worked.

Xavier had emerged from changing, “Did I miss anything, or was that all there was?”

“Just Max before that.”

The phone in the kitchen rang and mom grabbed it then brought it to Lily, “Here she is.” She held her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “It’s Audrey.”

“You were on TV!” Audrey said.

“Yeah, but they didn’t use most of what I said. “

“Oh good, that’s what my mom suspected. She said the network news probably cut everything too complicated or science-y. She thinks someone from public TV would cover it better. But aren’t you excited about being on TV?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, I think it’s cool that you saved the egg, and I hope you don’t get in too much trouble for it. I missed the whole flood thing working on an essay all morning. I hadn’t checked the creek monitors or the nest cam or anything.”

“Shoot, I haven’t even started on my English essay.”

“Well, the birds are okay now, you still have plenty of time.”

“I was going to go back out and keep watch.”

“Oh. Good luck with it all.”

“Thanks.”

 

When Xavier and Lily made it back to her dad that afternoon, they were well dressed for the renewed rain. Xavier had his own clothes under Lily’s dad’s ski clothes, and they’d found a pair of waterproof boots that almost fit him.

“I’m way too warm,” he said as they crossed over San Francisquito Creek.

Lily barely heard him, she was linking in to all her animal connections, including her murrelets who were a little nervous but safe where she’d left them. Then she looked down at the thrashing waters. Someone had cleared the branch that had anchored the big snag the night before, but the water still flowed well above its usual channel. “The city didn’t issue a new flood advisory.”

“Maybe they won’t know until closer to high tide.”

They walked together silently until they reached the turn out to where the nest now sat. Lily saw some sort of fence had been put in, and she hurried to ask her dad. As she came closer, she could see the fence was made of green plastic mesh, like a cheap knock off of chicken wire, about four feet high, held up by metal rebar poles.

Her dad stretched and came to the fence as he saw them approach. A sign read “Area temporarily closed to the public,” but her dad was on the other side. He carefully lifted a metal pole out of loops that secured it to another pole and the opposite side of the fence. It wasn’t a gate exactly. It was more like two fences came up from the water below to meet at the middle of the raised levee, where the two end bars attached with a couple of sturdy plastic loops.

“Who put this up?” Lily asked quietly. She could calm the nearby animals with magic, but there was no sense upsetting them with louder talk than the rain required.

“A very helpful park ranger came by, named Melody. I guess they’ve been getting various calls from people concerned about your birds.”

“I talked to her once.” Lily tugged at the collar of her Stanford jacket, remembering.

“Sounds like most of her department hadn’t been told about the murrelets before today. I tried my best to answer her questions. Putting up the fence was hard work, and she was happy to have me help. She told me to borrow your Stanford researcher badge if I’m out here again, although between you and me, I’m not sure how much longer you’ll have that badge.”

“What?”

Xavier put a hand on Lily’s arm, and her dad smiled for a moment, then he turned serious again.

“Kelly was out for a bit, too.” Her dad paused looking out over the wetlands, which were still much wetter than usual. “I gather Rachel Lebowski, that’s the murrelet specialist you were working with, right? She’s threatening not to put her name on any paper or project that you’re a part of. I guess the scientists think it’s pretty bad that you moved the birds.”

“Oh,” was all Lily could say. She could see why people were mad at her, but she hadn’t imagined Rachel would pull out of the research. “I wonder why Kelly didn’t call me again.”

“I think she only told me because I was here. That was after the ranger put up the fence. Oh, and Melody said she or another ranger would come back tonight and the police would include the access on their patrol. I told Kelly that, and she seemed to already know but not want to get involved. Maybe she’s trying to distance herself from whatever conflict Lebowski is stirring up.”

“Oh,” Lily said again, looking at the ground.

“You okay?” her dad asked.

“I will be. You can go home and warm up.”

“Would you like me to stay? I’m happy to play this however the two of you want.”

Lily looked at her Dad and Xavier and realized that for a moment she’d forgotten the whole magical aspect of being outdoors with them. She’d taken her connections to the animals and her ability to keep them calm for granted. She hadn’t thought about her connections to her Dad and Xavier, even though she felt those connections right along with the rest.

The way her dad spoke and looked at Xavier made it clear he hadn’t forgotten. He knew Lily might be able to influence them, and he was saying he’d do what she asked regardless.

“Thanks, Dad. I’m glad you were here to watch the nest and deal with Kelly and Ranger Melody. Xavier and I will be fine until someone comes for the night. We’ve mostly worked things out.”

Her dad nodded approval. “Well, I’ll come back before dark just in case. My pack still has some sandwiches and water.”

“Ours too.” Lily pointed at the packs she and Xavier had brought.

Dad smiled his lopsided smile, “Well, enjoy then.”

Xavier rolled his eye, and Lily’s dad mock punched him.

They opened and then re-secured the fence. There was a small tarp spread out where her dad had been huddled. It was farther from the nest and most of the animals than where Lily and Xavier had sat earlier, but maybe it was a better distance for people who weren’t relying on magic to calm the birds.

“Should we take his spot?” Lily asked.

“The tarps already wet from the rain.”

“Better than sitting on the ground.”

“I think I’ll stand for a bit.”

“I want to be where I can put my fingers to the ground,” Lily whispered.

“Fair enough.”

She headed toward the tarp and then turned back, saying quietly. “You up for a little experiment?”

“Here?”

She realized from his big eyes that he imagined any experiment would involve trying to influence him. “Not that kind. Just, I told you that sometimes I get sort of absorbed in the nature around me and I was worried that if someone took me inside when I was like that, I might never get reconnected to myself? Well, it didn’t feel at all like that during the flood. I think I can avoid losing myself now. What if I tried to go a little deeper without getting lost and you could try talking to me or even touching me if I seem to need calling back.”

Xavier swallowed. “I know I encouraged you to experiment, but that could go wrong in a big way. If you need to try something like that, I want to be here for you. But shouldn’t we wait for a less complicated day? And shouldn’t we decide inside?”

“Okay.” Seeing how Xavier’s whole body relaxed as she said it, Lily realized that he put effort into keeping his guard up when they were outdoors. She was glad for his caution and also glad that they weren’t having those sorts of problems at the moment. “I still want to look deep enough to make sure the egg is okay and maybe find out if any other animals are trapped. But I’ll be careful. If you see anyone coming or if I take more than five minutes, feel free to try speaking or shaking or whatever to let me know.”

He looked at her for longer than usual but then said, “Fine.”

Lily settled herself on the edge of her dad’s tarp, pulling the rest up and over her to make a tiny C-shaped enclosure. Then she touched her fingers to the ground and closed her eyes.

Her connections sprang to full force like a taut web with her at the center. Where she could previously control the static of nervous animals, she could now read the vibrations of their sleep, awareness, or fear. It was easy to sort out the birds. She’d become quite used to their connections, from the little brown birds still hiding in the bush they’d chosen that morning to the egrets who were stalking through previously dry areas below, seeking their small food. The mammals seemed the most upset by the storm. Her harvest mouse was nearest and calmly asleep, but other harvest mice hid along the levees. She learned from their vibrations that they could be nervous even while sleeping, perhaps still aware on some level that they weren’t in their usual burrows and that sounds and smells around them were not quite right. Even the large population of squirrels over by the houses and school where it hadn’t flooded seemed a little put out. Then there were fish and creatures in the water. Lily knew she only sensed the bigger ones, but there was a general excitement or extra energy to their vibrations. She wasn’t sure if it was positive or negative. Maybe extra food had washed up or maybe the salinity of the bay was too far out of whack, but pretty much every connection pulling from under water shared the same extra charge.

Then there was Xavier standing near her, his glow bright enough that it dazzled compared to looking any other way. She thought she could feel extra energy and anxiety in his connection, but that probably wasn’t her business to explore.

Instead, she focused in on the murrelets. Both parents were huddled together in their pipe, keeping each other and their egg warm. The egg glowed even more distinctly than before, and Lily realized she could focus on the separate pull from inside. If she had to name it, she’d say the chick was awake, but somehow she knew it was still inside the egg. She pushed her magic a little farther and sensed three brief movements in the egg. They were little tiny pulses, almost like a heart beating, but toward the outside of the egg-shaped glow. The adult birds reacted with fidgety movements of their own. They must feel something from the egg. Lily wondered if the chick was scratching or pecking to get out.

She waited for the motion to come again, but instead she heard Xavier say, “Lily, can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes without releasing her fingers, and for a moment she felt disoriented to be staring out into the wetlands rather than zooming in on the egg.

Xavier looked at her and waited until she was focused on him. “Someone’s coming.”

He pointed out to the perimeter levee, and Lily recognized Max. He was wearing the same rain gear from that morning, but Lily thought she could identify him by his gate at this point. He turned onto the levee with the nest, and Lily removed her fingers from the ground. She stood and went over by the fence to meet him.

“Hi, Lily.”

“Hi Max. This is my friend, Xavier.”

Max nodded to Xavier. “Are you the one who helped her move the nest?”

Xavier nodded.

Max shook his head and looked back to Lily. “You don’t have a monitor out here, do you?”

“No.”

“Not even a smart phone or anything with internet access?”

Lily shook her head.

“Well maybe you should rent one. I can’t bring the laptop out in this rain, but I’ve got the van in the parking lot if you want to come see. The murrelets seem to be getting restless, but neither of them is leaving the nest to eat.

“It’s raining pretty hard.”

“These are seabirds. They can fly along with a storm.”

“Maybe this pair doesn’t like storms.” Max looked unconvinced. Lily casually added, “Or maybe the egg is about to hatch.”

Max looked like he hadn’t considered that. “I wish we could ask Rachel.”

“Why can’t you?”

Max rolled his eyes. “She and Kelly are sort of going at it, in case you didn’t know.”

“Over us moving the nest?”

“Pretty much.”

“Sorry.”

Max turned his hands palms up and shrugged. “It’s mostly a problem for you and Kelly. I’m a member of the team, but the floodgate data came through fine. I’ve got plenty to work on and publish. However, while I won’t volunteer to guard the nest, I can keep a window open for the nest cam and give you a call if anything happens.”

“Thanks, that would be great,” Lily said with a real surge of gratitude. Even if her magic might show her the hatching, she'd need a way to confirm or explain how she knew.

After Max left, Xavier said, “I wonder why he didn’t call you this time.”

“He might not have known who was out here.”

“You sure he doesn’t like you?”

“He thinks of me as a kid. He’s got to be twenty-five or thirty.”

Xavier raised his eyebrows.

“Are you jealous?” Lily asked.

“Dunno. Maybe a little.”

“Well don’t be.” She kissed him, on the lips briefly. They both looked at each other as if daring the moment to get out of hand.

Xavier took a step back. “That reaction might encourage me to act jealous more often.”

They stood in the rain and laughed.

 

Back home at dinner Lily plowed through half a plate of spaghetti before her dad asked, “What’s the plan now?”

Lily wiped her mouth and said, “Well, the rangers made it pretty clear they didn’t want kids out there at night, even if I still officially have my research pass.”

“Grown-ups, they’re such a nuisance,” her mom teased.

“But Mom, they’re not even there officially. Melody and another ranger volunteered or something. And what if the chick hatches?”

Her mom and dad exchanged a look. Then dad said, “I’ll drive out with you if that happens, assuming the streets aren’t flooded.”

Lily frowned. “Next high tide isn’t until after six AM, and I intend to be on site at dawn.”

Rose put in, “You know, normal teenagers don’t even know when dawn is, let alone high tide.”

Rose had so much liner under her eyes today, that she looked like she never slept, but Lily refrained from commenting.

“What about you, son?” Her dad asked Xavier, “Would you like a ride home or to BART? You could borrow a bike, but it’s still raining pretty hard.”

Xavier stuck his chin out in a motion both sheepish and brave, “I was wondering if I might ask a different favor.”

“Ask away.”

“Could I stay here tonight, on the sofa or something? I’ve picked up a certain interest in these birds, and I’d like to head out at dawn as well.”

Lily hadn’t thought to fill Xavier in on the conversation his last email had precipitated. Between flooding, freezing, rangers, and reporters, she’d forgotten to mention that she’d been questioned about his hints and told her family about his magic. She wondered what he made of her parents' icy glances.

Rose pushed away from the table. “Go on. Say ‘yes’ to them like you always do.”

In a close to normal voice, her dad said, “Is there a reason you both think this chick is likely to be born soon?”

Lily still wasn’t used to discussing magic over the dinner table, but everyone was looking at her. “I saw the chick moving a little, maybe tapping or scratching right by the top of the shell.”

Her mom reacted fastest, “When was that?”

“Hours ago, when we first relieved Dad. And I don’t know if it means anything. It’s calmed down since. But even Max noticed that the parents were agitated on the nest cam.”

“That is pretty exciting.” Her mom had the sad sort of smile and damp eyes she got when she looked at babies.

“Freaks,” Rose muttered from the kitchen sink.

“What’s that?” their mom asked.

“Nothing,” Rose said.

Dad sighed, “Okay, you can bed down on the couch.”

 

 

 

 

 

17

People

There was barely enough light in the east to suggest dawn as Xavier and Lily headed out the next morning. They were dressed for rain and cold again, but only had to deal with thick fog. It wasn’t even all that cold. There hadn’t been much happening on either the nest cam or the creek monitoring site when they’d left. Now, they ate toast sandwiches and talked as they walked through the damp gray of morning.

“You sure you want to be doing this?” Lily asked.

“Are you kidding? Even if this wasn’t one of the most interesting experiences of my life, I’d want to be with you this weekend.”

“You didn’t send me a dream last night.” One glance and she knew he’d wanted to.

“It didn’t seem proper, and it was a good chance to test my control.”

“Did you send one to someone else?”

He shifted his eyes side to side, like a squirrel before it runs. Still not looking at Lily, he said, “I dreamed about Rachel Lebowski standing beside the flooded wetlands, seeing how things really were in the moment, and then seeing the murrelets with their chick and forgiving you. It was a bit more detailed and emotional than that. I figure it’s a test of a dream without me in it that could potentially have an affect I can see.”

“Wow. Just because she dreams it doesn’t mean she’ll do anything, but still, wow.”

“Yeah, it’s not a great experiment. But I tend to dream about things I’ve been thinking a lot anyway. It was either the birds or you.”

Lily didn't know what to say to that. “I told my family a little about your magic.”

“I guessed somehow.”

He shrugged and reached out to hold Lily’s hand. She was wearing gloves, which made it less romantic, but she felt more than romantic enough anyway. They walked silently for a while and the feelings inside Lily grew.

“No one ever told me falling in love was this much fun,” Lily whispered.

“Really?”

“Well, I knew lots of it was supposed to be pleasurable, but I mean, I actually like feeling kind of flighty and sentimental. Having you hold my hand and say you want to be with me all weekend seems unreasonably amazing.”

Xavier squeezed her hand. “Don’t take this wrong, but if you keep saying things like that, whether you’re willing me to or not, I might pull you in for a kiss and have trouble letting you go.”

Her body reacted almost as strongly as if he’d actually kissed her. Lily wondered if she was projecting her wants at him, but she didn’t think she was. “Is this how it usually feels?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before,” Xavier said.

“But now?”

“Are you asking me if I’m in love with you? Right now? Outside? Don’t you want to go check on your murrelets?”

The answer was in his tense fast voice with every word, and Lily knew this wasn’t a good time to discuss it. But she also wanted to hear him say “yes.” Then she realized that she was wanting it, felt terrible about possibly using magic on Xavier that way, and immediately felt like a bucket of cold water had dumped over her head.

Xavier was watching her. “Don’t worry, we can talk later, inside. Can you tell anything about the birds yet?”

Lily knew he was trying to change the subject, but when she reached for a connection to the murrelets, over the bridge and far away, the magical pull between her and Xavier was almost overwhelming. Still, she was able to distinguish the familiar connections to the adult birds. “I can’t feel the baby, at least not from here.”

Xavier squeezed her hand again. “It’s probably the distance. Could you always sense them from this far away? You’re getting stronger, aren’t you? I think my dream thing gets better with practice, too.”

Lily squeezed his hand back. “I get quicker at connecting and managing connections with practice, but I’m not sure the magic gets stronger overall. I kind of hope it doesn’t.”

Xavier’s eyes drooped as if he was a little sad, or thoughtful, at what she’d said. Remembering that he had fantasies of doing something great with his magic, Lily worried that she might have disappointed him. Still, all she wanted at the moment was to protect her birds. She didn’t want more control over them or over people.

 

It was several hours later and the sun was peeking through the clouds and fog when Lily said, “It’s really tapping now. I’m sure it’s trying to hatch.”

Only the male murrelet was in the nest. The female had flown away, presumably to feed, shortly after Xavier and Lily arrived. The two rangers had also left. It had been only Lily, Xavier, Wispy and the egg all morning. Lily kept her fingers to the ground, and their conversation had been much lighter than on the walk out. Now it was all paying off. She felt static in her connection with Wispy and realized she’d known what was happening with the chick even before he had.

She wanted to cheer, “Go baby, go!” But instead she sat silent, watching with her eyes closed.

Then Xavier whispered, “We’ve got company.”

Lily opened her eyes to see a new park ranger heading out along the levee from the bridge. He walked like a cop, looking straight at them with his shoulders back. Despite the timing, Lily pulled her fingers out of the soil. She could still feel the slightly nervous connection from the male murrelet, and instead of calming him, she kept the contact steady, hoping she’d know if the chick actually hatched.

Lily and Xavier waited by the green plastic fence as the new ranger slowly approached. When he finally reached them, he shook his head and said, “You kids have to leave.”

Lily pulled out her research badge, “I’m here as part of the Stanford Wetlands Conservation Study Team.”

He took the card, glanced at it, and made no move to hand it back. “Yes, Lily Thompson. I’m afraid we’ve had a complaint specifically about you removing a nest from its natural habitat and also potentially littering by placing that pipe back in the wetland tract.”

“What?”

The ranger looked at her and made no effort to answer.

“As I understand it,” she said, “these levees and this rise are also part of the nature preserve. We aren’t moving anything in or out of the preserve. We just moved the pipe with the nest we’d been studying to higher ground before the nest area was flooded by the new floodgate.”

The ranger nodded. “Nonetheless, you’ll have to leave.”

“Is someone else going to stay and guard the nest?” Lily could feel renewed nervousness from Wispy, and she also sensed Willow flying back. She wondered if the chick was hatching, but didn’t really think so.

“That’s not my department,” said the ranger.

“There were two other rangers out here last night to keep watch.”

“Not your concern or mine.”

Lily was trying to think of a diplomatic way to stall when Xavier said, “We’re still allowed to be on the public part of the land.”

“Not her,” the ranger answer, “Not until we research the complaint.”

“I’ll stay,” he said looking at Lily, then out over her shoulder. “Who’s that?”

Lily looked back and smiled. “It’s Dr. Martin. I don’t know the other person. It looks like they’re bringing a laptop!” Lily wanted to jump up and down with eagerness for the laptop and what it meant.

The ranger showed the most emotion he had so far, a quick lift of his eyebrows and glance over his shoulder.

Lily could feel the tension growing in the nest behind her and decided two more humans nearby would not be good right now. “Let’s walk out to the main levee to meet them and talk there.”

The ranger nodded and stepped to one side. Neither Lily nor Xavier made any effort to collect their belonging before carefully opening and re-closing the makeshift gate behind them. Together with the ranger, they walked back along the high ground and levees. Lily kept her awareness open for predators as she pulled out her phone and texted her parents:

May be forced to leave. Chick may be hatching. More later.

Dr. Martin hurried forward with short, quick steps, carrying the laptop and a briefcase. The person with him was a tall blond woman who didn’t need to change her stride at all to keep up. She carried a black boxy pack that looked like it could house some further monitoring device. Lily hoped a breakthrough in science was about to save the project.

“Lily Thompson,” Dr. Martin began, “I’d like to introduce Gloria Escoba from public radio’s ‘California Outdoors’ program. Max asked me to show her the way out here and to bring you this laptop. He thinks something might be happening in the nest.”

“Thanks!” Lily wanted to set up the laptop. She could feel that something was happening back at the nest. “Glad to meet you Ms. Escoba.” Lily held out her hand and continued, “This is my friend, Xavier, and this is Ranger . . .”

“Jonathan Ford,” the ranger shook hands with the two adults, suddenly much more polite. “I was explaining to these young people that we’ve had complaints about a nest being moved and also that it would be littering to move the pipe containing the nest back into the wetland habitat. The Open Space District is going to temporarily close the area to all access, including researchers, until the matter can be resolved.”

Lily couldn’t take her eyes off Dr. Martin and the packed up laptop, but she managed to say, “Nothing’s been moved outside the preserve, and the birds need protection now.”

Ms. Escoba from the radio station pointedly opened her black box, flipped a switch, and pulled out a microphone. “Ranger Jonathon Ford, can you explain to me where the murrelet nest is now?”

He hesitated, then pointed, “It’s out there, past the temporary fence on that natural levee.”

“For our listeners, can you explain where the levee is in relations to the preserve and the bay?”

“The raised ground that forms the natural levee runs from the bay, through the preserve, up to the manmade levee we’re standing on at the edge of an East Palo Alto residential area.”

“And the nest is inside the black plastic pipe that’s currently a few yards to the bay side of the fence?”

“Yes.”

“Which parts of this area are protected?

“Everything from the levee we’re standing on to the bay.”

“Meaning the pipe and nest are still on protected land?”

“Yes, they are.”

“But the Open Space District maintains it would be littering to move the pipe from one piece of protected land to the other and back?”

Ranger Ford's jaw tensed. “That’s what needs to be resolved.”

“Can you explain where the nest was originally located?”

“I think you’ll need to check with someone else in the department for further details.”

“Can either of you researchers explain where the nest came from?”

Lily had stopped reaching for the laptop to watch Willow return to the nest. She pointed, and the rest watched with her. “That’s the mother murrelet returning to the nest. Could we set up the laptop to check the nest cam?”

“I’ll do it,” Dr. Martin said. “You go ahead and explain what’s happened so far.”

Lily had never heard Dr. Martin speak deferentially, certainly not to her. He was a full professor. She glanced at the reporter to see if she wanted Lily to explain. The woman moved the microphone to within a couple inches of Lily’s face.

“Well, the nest used to be out there,” Lily began.

“Remember, this is for radio.”

Lily tried again, suddenly realizing the opportunity she’d been given. Audrey had said public TV would do better than the first reporter. Probably public radio was worth extra effort. “The nest used to be on that grassy rise, almost equidistant from all three levees and the bay. But the grass and reeds there are all gray now, up to a couple feet above the top of the rise, because that’s how high the flood waters surged yesterday. The nest site would not have gone below water with a normal high tide, but with the storm and waves and water pouring in from the floodgate, we knew the egg could be lost. We had to act fast, so we moved the pipe with the nest inside to the highest ground available. Lots of other animals and birds were gathering there anyway. The parent birds could have flown, but they would have lost the egg.”

The reporter turned to Xavier, “Anything you’d like to add?”

Xavier shook his head, “I’d rather not be on the radio.”

By now Dr. Martin had the nest cam showing on the laptop and said, “Something is happening in the nest.”

The journalist spoke into the microphone, “We’re looking at the view from a video camera in the nest. I see two moving shaping, are those the nesting birds?”

Dr. Martin said, “Yes, we have regular video overlaid with infrared, and you can see the parents are moving quite a lot beside the nest. Between them, this warm spot is the egg, and you can see it’s rocking a bit. That chick is trying to hatch.”

Lily and Xavier crowded in.

“It’s so close,” Lily squeaked.

Even Ranger Ford leaned in to see.

The reporter asked, “Is this when the chick was expected to hatch?”

Lily answered without looking away from the screen, “We weren’t sure when exactly the egg was laid. I hadn’t seen both parents out together since the last week of December, but we didn’t find the nest and egg until January 21st. A normal incubation time for ancient murrelets is 33-36 days, but there’s some uncertainty about the species or subspecies of the father bird. We have genetic samples from both parents that we’re still hoping to process, and we’re planning to collect the eggshell afterward to learn more about the chick. We knew the chick should hatch sometime this month.”

“You mentioned ancient murrelets,” Gloria Escoba said into the microphone, “But then you said you’re not certain of the species or sub-species of the father. Don’t both birds have to be the same species to have a child?”

Dr. Martin answered, “It’s a little more complicated than that, but if this chick is viable and the DNA confirms parentage, that would be a strong argument for both parents being the same species. The male has unusual marking though, and both birds have displayed unusual feeding and nesting behaviors. We may be dealing with a subspecies or a population that we haven’t seen before.”

“Ranger Ford, were you aware of this genetic uncertainty and that this egg was close to hatching?”

The ranger took a step back from the monitor. “No comment.”

“Lily, can you tell me why you were out here in the first place?”

“You mean today? I was guarding the nest. The fence that another ranger, Melody, put up yesterday might keep out some of the cats or raccoons that could run along the levee, but ground animals could tear or bite their way through if no one’s here to watch, and there’s flying predators as well that might take advantage of all the animals huddled together on the rise.” As Lily spoke she checked her connections but found no alarmed animals or approaching predators.

“What other animals are out there?”

Lily almost laughed, knowing she could give a frightfully comprehensive list if she dared. “Well, there were some egrets and other waders earlier, as well as a few endangered California clapper rails, but they’ve mostly gone back down into the marshlands. I think there are still some finches and a couple of endangered salt marsh harvest mice, and—”

At that moment, a beak broke through the egg.

“That’s the baby breaking through,” Lily whispered. It seemed her connection to the chick became instantly stronger, as strong as her ties to the parents, but she wasn’t sure if that came from hatching or from Lily expecting it.

Everyone was silent for a few moments as they watched the chick peck, rest, then peck some more. The sound from the nest cam was working again, and the reporter held the microphone to catch the sounds of the shell breaking. In less than a minute, there was a murrelet chick standing amidst the eggshell.

“Yes!” Dr. Martin said.

“Looks pretty alive.” Xavier laughed and caught Lily in a quick one armed hug.

Lily smiled and felt tears in her eyes. Funny, but that usually happened to her mom, not to her. “I should let my mom know.” The reporter was looking at her as if she expected more of a reaction. “When my mom found out what I’d done to rescue the egg, she said she understood because she’s my mom and she sort of feels that way about me.”

Lily stepped away to text her parents and saw them walking quickly along the levee toward her. Behind them came Rose with a couple of her anime-fan-Girl-Scout friends. Lily was confused, but she rushed to her mom saying, “The chick arrived!”

They all hurried back in time to hear the ranger explaining to the reporter, “We had a complaint from Dr. Rachel Lebowski and the University of Michigan Murrelet Project.”

Dr. Martin replied, “The kid may have made a mistake by moving the nest, but she saved a life,” he waved toward the monitor, “And we may learn something important from what happened here.”

The reporter still had her microphone out. Rose and her friends were crowding around the monitor while Lily’s parents watched from one side.

“I still need to do my job. Lily Thompson needs to leave the preserve, and all researchers as well as the public are banned from the fenced off area. You can take it up with the Open Space District on Monday.”

“We have a job here, too. I’m sure you’ll understand if we need to wait for confirmation from our project head,” Dr. Martin said. He walked away to make a cell phone call in private.

Lily put an arm around her mom as they watched the monitor. Her connection to the adult murrelets calmed even as the chick’s signal fuzzed in and out with nervous energy.

The reporter asked the ranger a few more questions until he refused to answer. Then she went to the girls huddled around the monitor and asked one, “What bring you out today?”

The girl in front stood up to her full height of not more than five feet. She had dark brown skin and hair in braids, as well as the overdone eye make-up that seemed to unify Rose’s tribe. “My Scout troop and other concerned youth,” she took a breath and held her chin out like she meant business, “We’ve been working to make things better between neighbors here, between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. We fought to keep the voluntary transfer school integration program, and we fought to get a proper floodgate to protect this neighborhood here.” She motioned to the houses and the school on the far side of the wetlands. “Now we hear there’s some problem for these birds because the cities haven’t planned all this out with the new floodgate. We came out to see and make sure everyone and every bird,” she paused to look at Ranger Jonathan Ford as if he were both younger and smaller than her, “is treated fairly. And we have more people coming, too.”

Lily noticed Rose had captured the whole speech on her cell phone and was now frantically texting.

The ranger walked down the levee to make his own phone call out of earshot as Dr. Martin returned from his call saying that Kelly was coming to sort things out in person.

Lily was both thrilled that the birds wouldn’t be left unprotected and worried that something might happen to frighten the murrelets and other creatures. For now, she used her magic to keep the nearby animals calm. She kept her senses open in order to know if any predators approached the nest. Without even touching the ground she could track the egrets and other waders hunting through the newly filled channels, and they didn’t seem nervous. She knew where the harvest mice slept and the small birds hid. She looked up as a flock of ducks flew by, but she’d known before she looked that they were only ducks and not a threat to the nest. It was as if her magic had been repurposed as nest radar. All she needed was to stay nearby and keep it up.

Kelly arrived with Max while the ranger was still talking on his phone. The purposeful way Kelly planted her feet broadcast anger from Lily’s point of view. She wondered if the ranger saw it too, because he put his phone away and stood up very tall and focused.

The reporter started out slowly, as if she wanted to reach the ranger right when Kelly did. Kelly was walking much faster but had a longer distance to cover.

Max walked behind Kelly, sparing a glance for the floodgate, his primary focus in the project, as if making sure no one was messing with that.

Dr. Martin turned off the sound on the laptop, then quietly carried it closer to where the confrontation seemed set to occur. The pack of middle school girls and Lily’s parents followed. Lily’s mom gave her a quick hug, and it was obvious she now had tears in her eyes for the baby chick.

Kelly didn’t spare a glance for Lily, Dr. Martin, or the reporter. She walked straight up to the ranger and said, “Good morning, you must be Ranger Ford. I’m Dr. Kelly Simonian, lead scientist for the Wetlands Conservation Study Team. I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that Dr. Rachel Lebowski has withdrawn her complaint. I have that in writing in case you need it.” She handed the ranger a normal size sheet of paper. “Also, our research is being overseen by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority as well as the Midpeninsula Open Space District. I believe we would need verification from all three agencies if there is to be a change in our access to the site.” She handed the ranger a paper clipped bundle of legal size sheets. “Is there anything else you need from me today?”

“Could I see your research ID, please?”

Kelly held it out but didn’t let go when the ranger tried to take it. He was forced to copy the information onto one of the photocopied pages she’d handed him. This encouraged Lily to speak up for herself as soon as he was done.

“Could I have my ID back now, please?”

The ranger didn’t even glare at her. He fished Lily’s ID from his pocket, copied the information, and passed it back without a word.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said to Kelly and walked off down the levee, pulling his cell phone out again. As he left, a new cluster of people, mostly middle and high schoolers, were coming over the bike bridge. Audrey and Pete were among them.

Lily wanted to tell Audrey about the chick, but she was left standing closest to Kelly, and Kelly looked pretty formidable after chasing away the ranger. Then all in a moment Kelly’s face softened. She turned sideways and greeted the reporter, “You must be Gloria Escoba.”

“Indeed. Do you have a minute to discuss what’s happened here this weekend?”

“I’d be happy to.” Kelly walked away with the reporter, but her parting glance let Lily know she’d be back.”

Lily returned to watching the next cam where the chick was mostly standing and preening, as if performing for the camera even if the image wasn’t that clear. Then there was the sound of several people approaching from the East Palo Alto access. Lily’s predator worries had her hurrying back before she could think. She took up position where the main levee met the natural rise where her birds sheltered. She stood at the junction silently pointing toward the reporter, the ranger, and all the rest. Two younger teens with heavy eyeliner went where she pointed without question. Then a Latina mother with four kids and an older woman in tow moved along the same way. Finally, six older teens, none of whom Lily recognized, followed along.

Two uniformed police officers parked their patrol car nearby on the access trail, then headed straight toward Lily. Her chest tightened. She was ready to submit quietly if arrested and wondered if they’d let her parents come along in the squad car. Or maybe she should leave her dad to guard the birds.

The lead officer walked up to her with a large man’s swagger. He was her height but heavily muscled. With a cool stare he said, “You’ll need to move along the public path. I’m here to keep people off this closed levee.”

Lily would have thanked him rather than arguing, but her throat felt like she’d swallowed a guinea pig. Instead, she nodded and moved quickly to follow those she’d been directing. Facing back toward the bike bridge, she saw another dozen people closing in from the Palo Alto side, and some of them had signs and tee shirts from the previous protest.

Lily came upon her sister, who was tapping at her phone again.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Cell phone magic.” Rose actually smiled at her.

Then across the bridge, wearing a pocketed vest over a windbreaker, came Julia, holding a pile of papers. As she came close to the reporter, Kelly motioned Julia nearer with a jerk of her head. Lily hurried toward them in time to see some of the papers. They were children’s drawings from the Junior Conservation Corps. Julia was saying, “This one shows a murrelet. The children never saw any themselves, but Lily showed them photos from her work with the birds. Look what this little girl wrote, ‘I love you wetlands!’ Those birds are a symbol of what these wetlands mean to our community.”

Lily realized her mouth was open as if to speak, but she didn’t know why. She couldn’t improve on what others were saying to each other and to the reporter.

Then she saw Ranger Ford talking to two more policemen who were coming from the Palo Alto side of the creek. He was pointing and waving his hands toward the crowd on the levee.

The three of them made their way toward the gathering as a small man with a camera asked Julia, “Could I get a picture of you and the drawings for the Palo Alto Weekly Newspaper?”

Rose snapped a photo with her cell phone at the same time. The sun glowed warmly through thinning clouds. The plants smelled fresh and clean after all the rain, shiny and displaying the wetlands at their best despite the muddy flood line marking what had passed.

Ms. Escoba was interviewing a man in a suit, and Lily heard him say, “No one notified the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority. We see no reason to rescind our research authorization when the complaint that started this has been withdrawn and none of the correct notification protocols has been followed.”

A hand on her shoulder made Lily jump. It turned out to be Xavier pulling her in close to say, “Is the bird up there anything to worry about?”

Lily realized she’d been aware of the high, circling predator, but she’d been waiting for it to come closer. Now, with a thought, she sent unease along that connection and the high-flying bird headed south.

“Are you okay, for yourself and the murrelets?” Xavier asked.

Lily took stock. Her magical net was sharp and large without her touching the ground. Should she be suspicious? Was the magic lulling her fears? Like a little kid at a birthday party, she felt assailed by strong emotions and unfamiliar people. The cops and Ranger Ford scared her, and she thought Kelly and Max were still angry at her. But Julia, her parents, even her sister had shown up to support her cause, and that didn’t have anything to do with magic. “What’s going on here is pretty overwhelming.”

Xavier touched her arm.

“On all levels,” she said. “But I think it’s going to be okay.

Xavier stood beside her, and they watched Rose use her camera to film the newspaper reporter talking to their Dad. The radio reporter tried unsuccessfully to question the police. The activists posed for each other, taking photos with the wetlands behind them. Julia gave Lily a thumbs up.

A few minutes later a policeman started conferring with the man in the suit. They both made phone calls as they talked and then waved the ranger over. Finally, the three of them went to the largest group of activists. Both reporters caught up almost instantly.

The police officer said, “We will continue to allow public access to this main levee trail, but there are concerns from Midpeninsula Open Spaces and the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority that large crowds, especially after the stress of flooding, might be detrimental to wildlife. We need you to split up and use the access trails in small, quiet groups.”

“What about the birds?” The woman who had brought her family with the first East Palo group asked. Lily wondered how she was connected to Rose’s network.

“Nothing is going to be done to interfere with any wildlife,” the officer said.

“What about the researchers?” Pete asked.

“They will continue to have full access,” the man from the Creek Authority said.

“What about Lily Thompson?” Rose asked, once again filming with her cell phone. It was strange hearing her sister use her full name that way, but Rose seemed very confident and powerful in the moment. When the ranger answered, he gave no sign of knowing Rose and Lily were related.

“The complaint has been withdrawn. The University of Michigan Murrelet Research Project now supports leaving the nest where it is. The lead researcher from Stanford, Kelly Simonian is taking complete responsibility for all members of her team.”

Lily smiled toward Kelly and was met by raised eyebrows and a neutral, serious nod. As the gathering broke up, most people heading back toward the main Palo Alto entrance, Kelly motioned for Lily to join her walking the other way.

They walked together along the levee, back toward the murrelets and their nest. Xavier stayed with Lily’s parents by the laptop, but his eyes followed Lily as she went. His look of anticipatory sympathy made Lily worry about what Kelly intended. But Lily felt the pull of her wetlands connections surrounding her, and she prepared to stay calm no matter what. Luckily, the murrelets didn’t need much from her at the moment. They were a comforting lump of contentment at the center of her magical sense, the baby’s connection now as calm and strong as the parents.

Stopping abruptly in an empty area, Kelly faced Lily across the levee path.

Lily tried to bring her thoughts back to the human interaction, but her emotions wanted to stay safely focused on the murrelets.

Kelly reached forward to put both hands on Lily’s shoulders, and Lily forced herself to meet her advisor’s eyes. The gaze was way too certain and intense. Lily looked down and to the side. The hands on her shoulders relaxed.

“Come on, it’s not like I’m going to hit you. Look at me.”

Lily looked.

“You know you could have drowned trying to rescue that nest?”

Lily nodded.

“You know you could have lost the egg, the nest, caused the adult birds to abandon the nest, damaged other parts of the habitat, and so on?”

Lily nodded.

“You know Rachel could have made it very hard for you to get into college, a job, an internship, whatever?”

Lily tilted her head to the side a bit. She hadn’t thought about that piece, and she hadn’t expected it to be part of Kelly’s rant. She was suddenly unsure if Kelly was mad at her at all or was only pretending to be.

“Why did Rachel change her mind?” Lily asked

“I don’t know. Maybe she realized that you’re only a kid. Maybe she needed a good night’s sleep.”

“She changed her mind overnight?”

“Not exactly. Well, maybe. Listen, as your team leader and academic advisor, I want to know that you learned something from this. Did you?”

“Definitely.” Lily didn't need to elaborate on what exactly.

“Good. I guess that’s the real point. Now do you think you or anyone else has said anything problematic to the reporter from public radio or the Palo Alto Weekly?”

Lily glanced at the blond woman who was now interviewing Max over by the flood gate. She didn’t know where the newspaper man had gone. “Ms. Escoba seems pretty nice, and I never spoke to the other one.”

“You don’t have any idea what got them out here, do you?”

Lily shook her head, and then something fell into place. “Audrey said something about public TV or radio on the phone yesterday, and I think her parents are pretty well connected.”

“And these other people?” Kelly waved at a couple of teens still watching the monitor and a cluster hanging out on the access ramp to East Palo Alto.

“I’m not sure, but my sister was part of that floodgate protest and some other East Palo Alto stuff. I think she’s the only one who would have known soon enough to call them.”

“You didn’t try to drum up any publicity?”

Lily glanced around at all the people in the now sunny wetlands. “No. I was out here with the birds.”

Kelly shook her head in disbelief. “One more thing, who’s the other guy standing with your parents?”

“Uh, Xavier.”

Kelly raised her eyebrows and waited.

“I guess he’s my boyfriend, and he helped move the pipe.”

Kelly waited a little longer and then said, “Dating these days if very strange. After I do what I can with the reporter, I think you should introduce me to him and your family. Don’t you?”

 

Several hours later, things finally settled down. The reporters had left first, and Lily’s parents offered to treat Rose and the remaining would-be demonstrators to smoothies. Kelly, Max, and Dr. Martin went back to campus. Wispy flew out to feed. Ranger Melody showed up with official instructions to protect the nesting site.

Only five people remained in the Faber Tract. Ranger Melody stood inside the levee fence with a smart phone that allowed her to monitor the nest cam. The other four stood near the creek and floodgate, Lily and Xavier on one side of the path, Audrey and Pete on the other. Everything was quiet except for the creek and a couple of birds.

“I think I’ll stay and take photos,” Audrey said. “Pete and I want to make a collage about the flood here. The reporter from the Weekly said he might want a copy.”

“I have photos from yesterday you can use,” Lily offered.

“Great.” Audrey beamed at her.

“You did okay,” Pete added.

Audrey rocked forward on her feet, and it seemed like there was something else she wanted to say.

“I’m glad for whatever you or your parents did to make stuff happen today,” Lily said to her instead. In that moment, Lily realized she meant it whole heartedly. Whatever influence Audrey’s parents used with the school, the city, or the media, it was part of the choices people naturally made. They had to make those choices one way or another, the same as Pete made choices with his art, and Rose with her friends and her phone.

Audrey shrugged but stopped rocking. “I think Pete and I have it covered here for now, if you two want the afternoon off.”

Lily nodded. “That would be great.”

Xavier said, “Good meeting you both.” He gave a little wave and took Lily’s hand as they walked away. Lily felt a warm rush of pride realizing that even splattered with mud, Xavier was kind and cute and very definitely her boyfriend. It felt good to know that she had a special connection to the guy walking beside her, holding her hand.

Then the magical connection between them pulled tight, suddenly much stronger than the calm focus she’d kept on the chick, the older murrelets, and the web of life around them. While her connection to the birds had seemed completely under her control, safe and even calming, the pull between herself and Xavier suddenly felt much too strong. She wanted to at least cross over the bridge and out of sight before she might lose control and embarrass herself.

“Hey,” said Xavier.

He squeezed her hand. His voice was calm, but his hand felt amazingly warm. Lily wasn’t wearing gloves anymore. She realized she’d left her pack out by the murrelets, but she wasn’t going back for it now. It seemed like she could feel every crease on Xavier’s palm and fingers. It should have made things harder, but somehow, her desire not to use magic on Xavier cooled her like a splash of cold water.

The sun was fully out of the clouds. Lily still needed her jacket, but there was a pleasant warmth on the side of her face toward the sun. She didn’t want to feel bad about her magic or her feelings for Xavier, but to enjoy it all and keep control. Focusing on her murrelets again, she appreciated how easy it was to track them, to keep the connection clear and calm, to feel connected to them without wanting anything. She memorized the feeling of their connections, especially her new connection to the little chick, suddenly realizing they might leave tomorrow or the next day.

“What?” Xavier asked. “You suddenly look sad.”

“Just realizing the murrelets might leave.”

Xavier squeezed her hand and the whole thrill of his touch flooded through her again, but she could feel how that was separate from her control of magic. The same way she could calm the birds when she was nervous herself, she could be aware of her own surging emotions and keep the connection between herself and Xavier neutral.

“Whatever happens, you’ve done well.”

Lily realized Xavier meant it on many levels, and it was true.

“We’ve done well,” she said.

“Can I take you out to lunch?”

“What, now? We’re all muddy.”

“There’s a burger place up ahead, by the lake. They get people in swimsuits and birding gear. I don’t’ think they’ll mind.”

“Have you been there?”

“I’ve biked past, and I’ve been thinking all morning about where we might go.”

“I haven’t been paying much attention to you, have I?”

He smiled. “You were fine. Lunch?”

Lily nodded and texted her parents not to worry about feeding them.

 

The burger place was nicer than Lily expected, but it was right by a boat ramp and kayak rental shop. Lily could imagine the staff had seen worse than her muddy self. All the same, she went to wash her face and hands after ordering. Xavier did the same.

They sat next to each other at a small table in the back corner, far from the families with kids that chatted noisily by the big windows in front. Washed up and with their jackets removed, the two of them looked fairly presentable again. Xavier was still in the gray sweater he’d worn all of yesterday, but it had washed up fine after their muddy bird rescue. His hair and eyebrows looked dark by contrast, and Lily could see scruff on his chin where he hadn’t shaved that morning.

He took her hand and their wrists overlapped. She couldn’t tell if the fast pulse she felt was her own or his.

“I waited until we were inside,” Xavier said, his eyes only inches from hers, his voice pitched low and soft. “I don’t want to wait any longer to tell you. I’m in love with you. I’ve known that at least since your visit to Berkeley. Outside this morning, I knew it was real. I wanted to say it, but I couldn’t know how much of it then would have been me wanting to say it or you wanting to hear it. I wanted to say more, but I waited, because: I—love—you.”

He looked astonishingly serious. Lily felt like her life must change in that moment. She knew she was sitting in a burger shop, but all that mattered was that she was there with Xavier, and he’d said he’d loved her.

Suddenly, Lily wasn’t sure if she’d said she loved him. Earlier, it had slipped out that she was happy about being in love, but saying that wasn’t really the same thing.

She said, “I love you.”

Something changed in Xavier’s face, but it wasn’t anything she could pinpoint. Even looking right at his eyes, easily able to see every muscle from his hairline to his jaw, she couldn’t see any movement. But something had changed.

They didn’t kiss. They sat there looking at each other until the number was called for their burgers. Then Xavier hopped up to get them and brought them both back.

While eating, they talked off and on, about the birds, about the reporters, about the way Rachel had changed her mind.

“Kelly said it had happened overnight, something like ‘maybe she got a good night’s sleep.’”

Xavier smiled a little. “Maybe it’s just as well I can’t know. I mean, I don’t think a dream can really change someone’s mind if they’re dead set on the opposite. Even if I knew she received the dream, I wouldn’t know if it made much difference.”

“The way everything worked out, it seems like your magic was part of it, and I still think there was something magic about you finding me right before the flood.”

“I love how everything worked out, whether parts of it involved magic or not. Listen to me, I love saying the word love to you now.” He laughed at himself, but it was neither happy nor sad. For lack of a better explanation, Lily decided the laughter was serious.

“Can’t we just enjoy it?” Lily asked. “Maybe this is naïve, but I’m not sure I could ever fall in love like this again. We shouldn’t mess it up by worrying about magic we’re both pretty good at controlling.”

Xavier kissed her, on the lips. It was fast and soft and over almost before she knew it was happening. Her lips felt like they were on fire, her whole body felt like he’d burned right through her.

“I want us to enjoy it,” he said. “The magic changes some things, but it’s not the main thing. Maybe it’s more about not wanting to mess it up. Does that make sense?”

“I think so. There are things I want so much they frighten me. If I was someone else, we might go someplace quiet outside. Instead, I’d rather wait and say goodbye in my garage, which has got to be the least romantic spot on earth.”

“It sounds quite romantic to me.”

They waited until the garage and then thoroughly enjoyed their goodbyes.

 

Monday, Lily checked the nest cam at least twenty times and stopped by the Faber Tract twice.

Tuesday she headed downstairs first thing to see an empty nest on the camera feed. But Max had been up before her, or maybe he hadn’t gone to sleep. There was a posting from the middle of the night:

            At 12:47 AM on Tuesday, February 6th all murrelets left the nest.

There was a video link below and Lily clicked on it. A recording of three infrared blobs, two larger and one smaller came on. Lily watched as Willow and Wispy left the nest together. The chick made a tiny squeak.

Then Willow and Wispy could be heard calling from outside, calling their chick to the water exactly the way ancient murrelets were supposed to do.

The chick wobbled a little way away from the nest and then waddled back.

The parents called again from outside and the chick seemed to lean in the direction of the calls. Then slowly, one baby bird step at a time, the chick made his way out of the nest and walked right beyond the range of the camera.

The video ran for four more minutes. Nothing happened onscreen, but Lily could hear the calls of the murrelets and imagine their chick’s first trip to the water. She decided in that moment to call the chick Wander.

She imagined Wander pushing around the tall grass by the end of the pipe, seeing the pipe from outside for the first time. The universe was no longer a tube but an infinite expanse of darkness.

Wander would have followed Willow and Wispy’s calls down the slope of the natural levee. It must have seemed very steep and very far down, with saltgrass here and pickleweed there to work around. Then finally, the chick’s first encounter with water, pushing in and swimming to Willow and Wispy.

That would be when the birds’ calls stopped. The video went quiet and ended.

Lily imagined the little murrelet family making its way out to sea. Wander would only swim, not fly, for several weeks. Willow and Wispy might fly and dive to catch their food and bring some back for their chick.

Lily went to the page with the radio tracking and logged in to see Wispy’s last known location. Wispy, and presumably his family, were still in the bay, not too far out from the Faber track, but they were heading toward the ocean. Lily could imagine them coming back, living as shore birds instead of seabirds, but she didn’t wish it, even indoors. She was happy for her murrelets.

After school, Lily went out to the wetlands. She knew the murrelets hadn’t returned. She found Max and Kelly at the van, packing up.

“They’re off!” Kelly said, then seeing the look on Lily’s face, she gave her a quick hug. “We collected the eggshell and got a video. Want to see?”

“I saw it this morning. It was great.”

Max was packing the nest cam into a case.

“What if they come back?” Lily asked.

“The tracking devices will keep us well informed if they’re near the bay, and we’ll hear occasionally if they go farther afield. There are tracking stations on the coast, on islands, and on boats. Maybe we’ll learn something interesting this summer or next breeding season.”

Lily nodded. She was glad Kelly still included her in that “we” now that the murrelets were gone and after she’d caused such a fuss.

“I think I’ll go see how the wetlands are recovering.”

“They’re pretty much back to normal,” Max said.

Lily made her way over the bridge and out to marker 53.25 on the levee. There was no special reason to head out there, it was simply a spot she’d gotten used to filling. Walking to her usual place, the ground was still muddier than usual.

She squatted down carefully and sank her fingers into the soft soil. All the familiar animals were there, the egrets, ducks, harvest mice, and finches. Lily felt for her murrelets and then went deeper and deeper until she found them. They were a long way away, a faint tug to the northwest. The connection was enough to tell her they were okay. All three of them were alive and together. She let herself drift among the glowing lights until something called her back.

“Lily?” She heard Kelly’s call again, and realized it was at least the second time. There was no panic in Kelly’s voice though, and Lily thought she couldn’t have been that hard to reach.

Standing up, Lily turned back toward the levee and Kelly, releasing the ground and releasing her connection to the murrelets.

 

The End


End file.
